Why your headphones can be hacked and how to fix that, how to claim your twenty dollars credit for the Verizon outage.

An app called are You Dead is going viral plus your tech cut questions answered.

What's going on.

I'm Richdmiro and this is Rich on Tech.

This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.

It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology.

I believe that tech should be interesting, useful, and fun.

Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one.

That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Give me a call.

If you have a question about technology.

Email is also open.

Just go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit contact.

Now.

You know I'm human and I'm not AI because I already screwed up in the beginning of the show, so you know I'm here, I'm live, I'm with you.

We're gonna get through this together.

We've got great guests this week.

I'm getting so many questions about this one, the California Elite Request and opt Out platform.

I've got Tom Kemp from the California Privacy Protection Agency to talk all about that and even if you don't live in California, it's still really interesting what the state is doing to help residents protect their privacy.

It's a pretty interesting platform.

Then we've got YouTuber kit Boga to talk about modern scams.

Really interesting takeaways there about what you can do to protect yourself from scammers.

We all need that advice.

And then later on we've got Professor Tim Spector, one of my new favorites, co founder of this app called Zoe Health.

He's going to talk all about how they're using AI and science to score the foods that you eat from one to one hundred.

Yeah, that's kind of eye opening that app.

If you haven't downloaded it yet, it's called Zoe Health.

Welcome to the show.

Very exciting.

This week was all about getting back into the swing of things.

Last week I was live from Las Vegas for CS.

It always takes me a long time to recover from that show, not physically, not you know, I didn't get sick like a lot of people.

I watched all my tech friends post on Instagram how they were sick after CS and I don't know what I do but maybe because I'm such a germaphobe, but I kind of did not get sick, which is a great thing, but it still just takes a lot because it's so much all at once.

Like I'm going through my videos, I'm still posting them to my Instagram at rich on Tech, I'm still showing them on TV.

You get a lot of content.

And I realize by the way that if you are an up and coming tech person, like you want to do something on social media or whatever, literally just go to there's a tech show every week somewhere, just go to them and create content.

I could literally do that for the rest of my life.

Probably.

There's so much on display at these shows.

It's really a lot of fun.

I don't know if I'll be able to do that.

I can't go to every show, but there are so many.

If you want, like a new career, you just want to be on social media doing videos and stuff in the tech world, that is a you could easily do it.

You just have to figure out how to monetize, but I'm sure you could.

This week, I did something a little interesting.

I took my SIM card out of my iPhone and I put it back into an Android phone, specifically the Samsung Galaxy S twenty five Ultra.

Why did I do this?

I don't know.

I just like to challenge myself, and this was a challenge because number One, as soon as I start texting people, they say, what's up with a green bubble?

Rich?

And I'm like, you know, I'm a tech person.

You know, I try different things, you know, I try to be dynamic in my life.

And I'll tell you what happened.

I was in Vegas.

I used the Samsung almost exclusively, and I was like, this is pretty good.

Like I forgot how much I like the different things you could do on Android.

I said, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and put my SIM card in there.

Now.

When I say that, it's a virtual thing.

So I will tell you I've tried to do this a couple times where it actually just my sim, my electronic SIM leaves one phone and it goes into never never Land and it never arrives on my new phone.

So I've had this happen several times where I'm just without a phone line for like three or four days until I can walk into the store and literally ask for help.

And so I really don't do this very often because that happens so many times to me in the past that.

I'm just like, okay, But long story short, I really like the way you can customize an Android phone.

You can make it the work the way you want it to.

And I think Apple is caught up in a lot of ways with that stuff.

But there's still some things about Android that just work better.

And for me, it's like, if you are sort of a phone nerd and you want to do things exactly the way you want to do it, you can do that on Android.

To me, the biggest gap is still voice search.

Number one.

You can easily search voice on Androids so much faster than on the iPhone and AI.

Obviously we're gonna talk a lot about AI, but the iPhone, you know, that's a laggard in that area anyway.

So I'm still trying to figure out this whole situation because now I don't have like a way to charge everything all at once, my watch doesn't really sync with the phone.

A lot of things I used to do that were easy, just take a little extra time.

I'm in steps, especially by the way, I will tell you, I do think that social media content creation and video is still better on the iPhone, Like hands down, I think that the Samsung does a great job, but so many apps are optimized for the iPhone that you're like, oh, I could do this on the iPhone, I can't do that on Samsung.

Why not?

Why not?

Now, I will say, and I've talked about this before.

This is why I like kind of independent third party apps that optimize for everything.

But there are still apps that I have on the iPhone that I love that will not come to Android for some reason, and it really annoys me.

What else I will keep you posted on this.

I don't know how long this setup is going to last.

I'm also not the typical phone person, like I will still have my iPhone in my backpack because I need it, and I will still be using it.

But it's one of these things where I like to see how these different platforms work so that I can talk about them more easily on a show like this.

So when you call in with your issues, you know you're trying to decide whether you should switch.

I can give you a great opinion on that.

Now let's talk.

AI.

I know you're gonna just turn off the radio, don't do it.

Just hear me out, because this really affects anyone.

This affects anyone who's using an iPhone or Android.

So Apple this week effectively admitted that it really can't make its own AI fast enough, so it is going to use get this, Google's Gemini to make Siri smarter.

They came out with this joint announcement.

So I thought was kind of funny because it's only posted on Google's website, like Apple didn't post it on theirs.

What I think is kind of funny.

But basically Apple and Google have entered into this multi year collaboration where they are gonna make Siri smarter using Gemini under the hood.

What does that mean.

It means that Apple is saying, we can't figure this out on our own.

Google has clearly figured this out.

We're going to use their technology.

Doesn't mean when you call up Siri it's gonna be Gemini.

It's still gonna be Siri, but it's gonna be underlying powered by Gemini.

What does that mean?

Well, we got to bring you back to twenty twenty four WWDC.

Apple introduced this thing called Apple Intelligence and they promised, oh my gosh, Sirih's gonna get so smart.

Sirih's gonna understand your emails, your photos, your texts, and your notes, all while protecting your privacy.

All this information on your phone, Siri will understand it and pull from that when you ask it a question.

Fast forward two years, none of that has happened.

Siri, in fact has gotten a little bit better, but nothing like what we're seeing with chatch Ebt and Gemini.

So clearly it has turned out to be much harder than Apple expected to do this.

So now they're gonna use Gemini as the brain for Siri.

So Gemini is gonna work behind the scenes.

You're still gonna use Siri, and Apple says all of their privacy protections will be in place.

But this is a very practical move because Apple needs something that works right now.

And hopefully these improvements will be on iPhones by the end of the year.

And I think if they do come to the iPhone, it's going to be a big win because so many people have so much information stored on their iPhone.

They want to be able to tap into that with Siri.

Hey, sirih where'd I go on vacation last year?

You know, pull up that calendar event for next week, or give me a little a dossier on this person I'm meeting with at this meeting, like what do I know about them from my past emails?

It can pull all that stuff, or hey, something as simple as when's my flight next week?

I mean, those are easy things.

So hopefully that should happen.

And again, Apple has promised this all going to be private, so a lot of this computing is going to happen on the iPhone itself, and if it can't, they're going to use what's called Apple's Private compute servers and they're going to use the information, send it there, and then as soon as it's all processed by AI, Apple deletes it after it's sent to your phone.

So everything's really done in a private way.

And I do believe that because I sat through meetings with Apple where they explain how that stuff worked and they took a lot of engineers to figure that out.

Now, Google, this week, not to be outdone, made their own announcement called personalized Intelligence for Gemini.

This is basically the same thing, but if you're a Google user, it will now let AI tap into your Gmail, your Google photos, your YouTube, your search history and more.

I got access to this this morning, and it is quite wild.

I asked it to tell me all about myself it gives you, like these little suggested questions to ask, and it is just insane.

Gemini knows all about you.

It can tell you where you've been on vacation, the type of car you drive.

It can infer things about your career.

It said, hey, one of the questions it suggested, It said, hey, if I'm not a tech reporter, what else would I be really good at?

And it looked at all my emails and all my documents and all my photos and said, here are things that you like, and here are things we think you'd be good at.

That's wild.

So it's just it's it's the next level of AI being personalized to us.

Now doesn't get everything right.

It said, we know you're a Jets fan, so you'd like this.

I said, well, that's really my son, and it Google said this in their announcement.

We're not going to get everything right.

Some things we're gonna get wrong.

We're going to have further wrong things.

So if it's wrong, just tell us, tell Gemini that it's wrong, and it will fix it for the next time.

But the bigger picture here is that I know AI can feel a little bit strange and unsettling, and like where is this all going?

But I think that when we get access to faster, more relevant answers without digging through years of emails and photos, having our information clearly synthesized by AI and easily accessible is game changing for all of us.

Whether you're on iPhone, Android, Google, Apple, Siri, Open AI, with Chat, ebt, it is all happening, and I think it's really really useful.

So look for that.

Look for that on your phone.

You'll get a pop up.

It is opt in on the Google Gemini stuff.

So if you get a pop up, you want to opt in, you want to try it out, go ahead and do that.

If you don't, just don't opt into it.

But I'm excited for it.

Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one Coming up?

Why is everyone posting about twenty sixteen on social media?

I'll explain that and much more right here on rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you in twenty sixteen.

Oh just kidding, But why is everyone posting about twenty sixteen?

Like, think about in your head?

Can you remember one thing about twenty sixteen?

No?

So, but everyone is hopping on this bandwagon.

It's like a viral trend on social media.

I guess it's been ten years since twenty sixteen.

But it's not like that was like a great year that everyone's like, oh my gosh, twenty sixteen was so amazing.

No, it's like there's nothing notable about twenty sixteen except it was ten years ago and now people are posting about it, like I don't know, Like I look through my pictures, I'm like, there was nothing special about twenty sixteen in my photos.

But anyway, if you noticed, if you're scrolling through social media, everyone is posting about it, throwing putting these throwback pictures.

For some reason, in the dog gear snapchat filter was popular.

There were viral challenges back then.

Closer by the Chainsmokers, I guess was a popular song back then.

I don't know.

I mean, obviously these things all start on TikTok and then they just kind of they trickled down into social media.

So I have not posted about that yet.

It's just too much work.

Like I didn't feel like looking through my pictures of twenty sixteen to find like ten good ones, but I know everyone else has done it, so Anyway, if you're wondering why everyone's posting about twenty sixteen, it's just fun.

That's what they're doing it for.

There's no specific reason except the fact that people are just being nostalgic for a random year that was ten years ago.

Let's go to Susan in San Jose.

Susan, you're on with Rich.

Hey, I remember you from your first day.

You your personality and information is just fantastic.

Your mother must be very very proud of you.

Oh thank you.

I need to ask her one day.

Well, yeah, she'd never tell me.

Not kidding.

What's up?

I have an eighty eight year old friend hates his iPhone, would really like to go back to like a flip He just wants phone and text any suggestions on.

A flip Yes, there is, so he doesn't.

He doesn't want a standard smartphone.

He hates it.

He has one, He has a great iPhone, hates it.

Oh wow, he's gonna go from an iPhone to a flip phone.

Okay, Well, I mean I think the standard issue here is the Nokia twenty seven to eighty, which is about ninety dollars.

It is unlocked, which means it's gonna work with T Mobile.

It's gonna work with AT and T, it's gonna work with Verizon, it's gonna work with all those like you know, smaller Envy and O's mobile virtual network operators like a US Mobile or a Visible something like that.

But this is just your standard flip phone.

I mean, it's not gonna be anything special.

It's just gonna have, you know, some of the modern amenities, Like it does have a USB C charge report, it does have Google Maps for navigation.

Let's see what else.

It's got the flashlight, it's got a little camera, it's got a a headphone jack.

But I don't think it's the standard size.

But you know, it's one of those things where it's just gonna be a flip phone.

And if you want a phone that you can close when you're done talking, this is gonna be the other brand that people really like for these pretty inexpensive phones.

If you go on Amazon, there's a ton of them, but the TCL they make a bunch of them.

They've got a Flip three that's just fifty three dollars.

I mean, that's not a bad deal.

But the Nokia twenty seven to eighty flip is really the one I think that most people are getting, but there's so many of them.

There's a website called Dumb Wireless.

Dumb Dumbwireless dot com met with these two young founders of this website.

They said, you know, we're just trying to make people less dependent on their phones.

You know, we're so sick of everyone being on their phone all the time.

And so they put this, put this website together with all of the current I guess you call them like light phones, or they call them dumb phones.

But they've got a whole bunch of one here.

So maybe your friend and wants something that's a little different.

They've got Let's see, what are the other brands here, the AGM M nine, the jelly Star, they've got the Sunbeam, the Nokia that I mentioned.

The Barbie Phone is on there.

If your friend wants a Barbie phone.

They've got the Punked.

I like that one.

The Punked p U n K T looks really cool, but it's so expensive.

It's like three hundred dollars.

And then remember this phone that we're gonna I think we talked about it last week, the clicks Communicator.

This is the phone that looks like a BlackBerry, but it's more kind of intended to be a secondary phone or for people that don't want to be scrolling all day.

So that's another option right there.

So you got a lot of options, Susan, I think one of those is going to work for you for sure.

Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Uh did you speaking of phones?

Were you affected by this Verizon outage?

I was not, but I got a bunch of people said they were a bunch of family members.

Seemed like it was concentrated on the East host.

Happened a couple days ago, early January.

I think it was the fourteenth.

It lasted about ten hours, was resolved by the end of the day.

And you know, they haven't said, as far as I can tell, what caused it, but usually it's like a software update.

It was not a cybersecurity incident, but a lot of people were left without their phones, of Verizon customers, and so Verizon said in a tweet, we did not meet the standard of excellence.

It's pretty rare that they do this.

But this happened last year too.

I don't know if you remember that it was a longer outage, for sure, but they gave customers that were affected a twenty dollars credit, but they did something that was a little bit like, come on Verizon.

They didn't make it automatic.

So if you were affected by this outage, you should get a text message that will tell you to open the my Verizon app and claim this twenty dollars credit.

And I think it's one credit per account, not per line.

And if you're a business customer, obviously the stakes are higher.

Verizon's going to be getting in touch with you in a different way.

So this is more for the consumer side of things.

But we don't like outages.

We rely on our phone so much.

And Verizon is pretty solid.

I mean, all the carriers have been pretty solid.

But when these things happen, they really affect a large swath of not only people, but things because so many devices and cars and smart gadgets are dependent on these networks.

But if you want that twenty dollars credit, watch for the text, go to the mina Verizon app and you should.

You should have a little banner that says redeem this twenty dollars.

It would have been nice if it was automatic, but think about it saves Verizon a lot of money for people that don't don't submit for the credit there all right, coming up, we're gonna talk about California's new privacy website.

I'll tell you how you can get in on that.

Eighty to eight rich one oh one.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Back to the phone lines in just a moment.

But if there is one thing that has been light up my inbox lately, it is this question, how do I get my personal information off the Internet and out of the hands of data brokers?

And specifically, if you live in California, there's a brand new free tool that says it will do just that.

It's called Drop, Delete, Request and Opt Out Platform.

Now I went through the process myself this week.

You have to verify your residency, fill out some personal information, name, data, birth phone number, and then they will do the rest.

And even if you're not in California, you'll probably want to listen to this because this is probably going to be replicated by other states or even the federal government.

So recently I spoke with the executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, Tom Kemp, to explain all.

All right, so this is such a big topic in our world today, privacy in general.

You guys just recently launched this new website called DROP.

You can tell me what that stands for and what it does.

But many people, I don't think I've ever gotten so many emails about a new website in a very long time like this one.

So people are very curious about what it is and what it does.

Give me the high level kind of answer there, Well, that's exciting to hear.

Yes, DROP stands for the Delete Request and Opt Out Platform.

It's a free tool available from Calprivacy and what it does it allows Californians to go to our website, verify their residency, and make a request to have hundreds of data brokers delete all their personal information.

So it's pretty amazing that it's basically a one click on stop ability to have your data deleted from hundreds of entities that basically just collect and sell your information behind the scenes.

Yes, to talk about that a little bit.

I mean, people are sort of aware of this, but we don't really know where our information is going.

But you're saying this stuff is just kind of passed among brokers all day, every day and sold as well.

Absolutely.

I mean, look, we're in a digital economy.

Data is the new oil, and there are hundreds of businesses whose sole business model is to collect our information, our personal information like our email address, our phone numbers, our mailing address, even personal very sensitive personal information such as health information, what diseases you may have, what are your political interest et cetera.

And what they do is they collect it, and they create digital dossiers on each and every one of us, and they sell it to anyone and everyone with a credit card.

But unfortunately, what we're seeing right now is that bad guys are actually accessing that information and sending us the spam text targeted phone calls.

And so what we've seen is this data broken bridge industry has led to a lot of identity SAFT, a lot of identity fraud, UH and other weaponization of our personal information.

I went through it this morning.

I signed up.

I was able to verify you based have to verify that you're you live in California and you've got you know, a phone number and an email address.

That's how I did it.

That, I mean, I think that's one of the ways of doing it.

And then you just put in your information.

Now the thing that's interesting and you can explain to me, I you know, it asked be yours.

You know, pretty basic info like your name, your age, data, birth, where you live.

But then it asks for these identifiers, you know, things that identify your phone, your TV, and your car like your VIN number.

So that was surprising to me that this goes that deep where these agencies are.

I guess these these data companies use that to track us absolutely.

Look, I mean there's different categories of data brokers.

Probably the ones that we're most familiar with are the people search sites.

So if you google your name, your address, or your phone number, or your email address or even your mailing aggress, all of a sudden you see yourself pop up on hundreds of websites.

If you want to get removed from those people search sites, that's why you need to put in your zip code, your email address, and phone number.

Now, it turns out that there are hundreds of companies that simply track your geolocation and they sell it.

And so there is a mobile advertising ID that you can also enter the system that can facilitate deletions from those type of data brokers.

And then finally, yes, there are people that track your cars and your purchases of your automobiles, et cetera.

And so we also offer the ability to add your vent.

Now, these are all optional information.

If you simply just want to not have your phone number be sold by anyone, just put your phone number in.

But we ask for the minimal amount of information to enable mass deletion of your personal information.

With these businesses is that you don't have a direct relationship with Their business model is to sell your data.

They don't sell you anything.

They sell your data to other entities.

So I think at last count I saw as over one hundred and thirty of these data brokers that you're working with.

There's an option to include more as they're added to the list.

When will people start seeing the results of this?

Right now?

The data brokers have to register with the state.

Last year, over five hundred and forty five data brokers registered.

They have the month of January to register, so that one hundred and thirty five hundred and forty number is what's currently in the system right now, But we expect by early February they'll be well over five hundred data brokers, so the deletions don't start kicking in to August, and that makes sense.

We want the data brokers to register, we want them to test out the deletion mechanism, et cetera.

So you're not going to see the full impact of the deletions until early fall.

But it's it's good to get it out of the way.

And the nice thing is you can go back to the system.

If you add a new email address, a new phone number, you remember an old ZIP code that you lived in, etc.

You going to go back and add to the system.

But come this fall, the data brokers will have to access the system and they'll have to match the records and do deletions every forty five days.

And it's a permanent deletion, so you don't have to go back and make requests of these data brokers.

It's one and done.

And if you want to exclude specific data brokers, you can do that, or the default is select all and you don't even have to think about it.

Is there a penalty if you know, I put my information in there and I still get a call or the data broker doesn't take my information down.

The fines that these entities could have would be two hundred dollars per record per day.

So if you discover that you go to a people search site and your information is still there, but they reported back into the DROP system that the deleted it, but you've found it, or you report a complain to us, or we discovered this is not happening, it's two hundred dollars per day for your record.

We're a dedicated independent agency and we're highly focused on ensuring that you and your fellow Californians are able to take control of your personal information and say no to the sale of your and my data without our input, and that's what we're trying to enable here with the DROP system.

Do you suspect that other states will do this or the federal government will do this?

And what's your advice for people that are listening that are in other states?

What can they do?

Well?

They can always move to California, that's one thing, and become a resident, but no, Look, it's funny that if you look at some of the social media message boards, they're lighting up and people are an other states really want this.

This kind of shows the overall pain point that consumers are experiencing.

So next Thanksgiving, when your out of town relatives come in and they start dissing California, just show them the DROP system and say we've got that.

They don't so, and we're more unhappy to engage with legislators and other people in other states and tell them what we're doing right here.

But yes, there's definitely California envy happening with the DROP system as we speak.

I like that dig He's like, you know, people want California stuff.

That was Tom Kemp from the California Privacy Protection Agency once again.

The website.

If you live in California want your information deleted from these data brokers, you can sign up now.

It's Privacy dot Ca dot gov slash drop.

So the website is the drop website delete.

Let's see what is it called again?

So why can't I remember this one?

Drop?

Drop?

It is the delete request and opt out platform DROP.

I'll put a link to that on my website.

Rich on tech dot tv.

Keep in mind you sign up now that actual cleanup doesn't start until later in the summer, And if you don't live in California, there are plenty of paid services that will do something similar.

On the website rich on Tech dot TV.

All right, let's get back to the phone lines eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two for one zero one your calls right after this.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

The website is rich on tech dot TV.

You hear something, you need some more information, just go there.

It's right at the top of the page.

Actually it's not.

It says radio show and it's episode one fifty seven.

So you'll find links to everything I talk about right there.

So, whether it is the flip phone I mentioned, the Verizon outage, that new California privacy website, it's all linked up right there.

Let's go to let's go to Sylvia, line three in Marino Valley, California, Sylvia.

You're on with rich Yeah.

Hi, Rich, Hey, thank you for taking my call and appreciate you teaching my old brain all kinds of new stuff.

Well, I'm happy to do that.

What can I help you with?

Yeah, So my question is I'm an Apple Watch versus a garment or a Galaxy I've been thinking about getting Apple Watch for emergency services, all detection, call detect, health info, you know, the large screen bright for the size of the watch.

But I was leaning to Apple and then and a friend of mine said, no, you need to check out Garment.

My niece has a Galaxy them she really loves, So can you help me out on that place?

Sure, what kind of phone do you have?

Apple?

Okay, Well, then the Galaxy's out of the running here because Galaxy only works with Samsung, so that one's out of the window.

So I would say, I mean, just right off the top of my head, unless you are an avid hiker or biker or outdoor enthusiasts, the garment is really more for those use cases.

It's fantastic.

People love them.

I've not personally used one, but I know people that have them and they absolutely love them.

But it is mostly the hikers, the bikers, you know, the just kicking always out.

Yes, okay, now that's not saying the Apple Watch won't do that.

The Apple Watch does all that stuff, and it does it very well.

And I love the Apple Watch, even though I'm not wearing it right now, because if you heard me earlier, I've switched to Android right now, so we're in a pixel watch.

But the Apple Watch is fantas And here's the deal.

If you are looking for anything medical or fall related, this is the watch that you want.

It's got great fall detection.

It was the first to have it.

It's got car crash detection on it.

Although I will say when I had my car accident and I was hit hard, my Apple Watch did not call for help.

It didn't even say anything, which I could not believe.

Neither did my iPhone, which I also can't believe.

But I've been playing football with my kid in the street and I'll, you know, catch a big throw and it will say, hey, just fall.

It felt like you got hurt, and it's like, no, I'm okay.

So I would say that's what you want.

Now.

When it comes to which Apple Watch model to get if you want the most robust health tracking features, I think for you it comes down to two models, the Series eleven, which is the newest, and then the se three, which is kind of their budget but it's also new.

These devices pretty much have a lot of the same things.

The higher end one, which is the eleven, is going to give you hypertension notifications.

It's going to give you the electro cardiographs if you need that, you can you can take like a heart reading.

Let's see they do all the vitals the same.

All the emergency stuff is the same.

Let's see what else do you get.

I'm trying to see things screen?

Right, Yeah, you can get a large screen.

There's there's different sizes and so they've got like, I think forty four millimeter.

Let's see, there's like I think the largest size.

Let's see what the size is here.

Uh, there's a forty two and a forty six millimeter.

So I would go with the forty six if you want like the largest screen possible.

And then the other decision you have to make is do you want cellular so your phone your watch will work no matter what.

The only difference is if you want cellular, it's going to cost you about one hundred dollars more, plus you have to pay monthly.

The difference is if you walked out of the house without your phone.

So let's say you went for a walk around your block or a walk in your neighborhood and you fell down and you couldn't get up right.

Your Apple Watch would use cellular to call for help, or you could call for help if you didn't have cellular, your watch would not be able to do that because it needs the iPhone as the conduit to go through to make that call.

Does that make sense?

It does?

It does.

And I don't know what the radius would be if I'm out and about somewhere or home, and let's say I'm out in the backyard and I fall.

These are the stories that I have heard from friends, you know, And I don't know how far of a distance it could pick up my cell phone service.

So I definitely want a separate line.

I would be willing to pay for that.

And I think, yeah, I think that's a great decision.

I would tell you in my experience around the house, the Apple Watch is really bad about connecting to the phone when it's not when it's even a little bit further away.

So we're talking according to the you know the numbers, it's a it's just a couple dozen feet because it's bluetooth, right, So it's just the range of Bluetooth.

Like if you ever had headphones you walk around, you know, sometimes they work depending on you know, what the interference is nearby, but you can't trust that and so for me personally, like I run a lot, I've always had a cellular connection on my watch because I love the idea that I can just go out and not have my phone on me and my watch will still protect me or help me if I need it.

You know, I can still make a phone call.

So that's what I would do.

I think the decision's pretty easy when it comes to the SE which is the basic I would just look online on the Apple website.

They've got kind of comparison tool which you can compare the series eleven to the SC three.

The SE three has gotten a lot better.

It does a lot.

The Series eleven comes in a larger screen at this point, and it's easier to see from a variety of angles.

It's also brighter.

But you know, parents love the SE three for kids.

Seniors also love the SC three because it's a little bit cheaper, it's a little bit easier.

So but the eleven is I do know they have what an ultra or something?

Is that what this is?

The series eleven is that the top top end of the well.

The ultra is a whole nother one, and I don't think you need it.

I think that's more for someone who is out and about hiking and all that kind of stuff.

That's more.

That's that's more their answer to the garment.

I don't think you need that.

It's got a longer battery life, but I think that I think for the series for you, I think the series eleven would probably be the sweet spot for for all the features you want.

Eleven.

Yeah, okay, that's that rich.

Thank you so much.

And I was literally on my phone, uh, comparing right as your show came on.

So perfect timing.

And I'm sure there's a lot of seniors listening to this and and very grateful, grateful for your knowledge.

Much appreciated.

Thank you, Sylvia, appreciate it, and good luck with the watch.

I think you'll really enjoy it.

I will tell you I am missing mine.

I really am.

I will say I've said this before on this show.

I actually like at this point the Apple Watch more than the iPhone because the Apple Watch does everything that I want.

I've got great apps on there.

It does my hike tracking, it does my running tracking, I can listen to music without my phone.

I mean, it just does so many things really well.

And I think that and I have the Ultra and I think it just works really well, the software, everything, the hardware.

H Okay, I'm switching back right now in the commercial break.

No, I'm just kidding, but I'm wearing the pixel Watch, and I will tell you the one thing I love about the pixel Watch is the voice to text is unbelievable.

Like I'm talking, it does not get things wrong.

Ever.

It also has Gemini on it, so you can ask questions on this watch that you'd never be able to ask Siri because she wouldn't understand them in a million years, and you can get an answer.

Now are those two things worth you know?

Switching?

I don't know, but I do, I you know, And this is why I try different things, so that I can compare them and contrast them and tell you what the best option, what the high points are, the low points, the pros, the cons, all that good stuff.

So yeah, I'm missing certain features for sure, but I'm loving others.

Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

Coming up, I'll tell you why the FTC is banning GM from selling your driver location data for a couple of years.

That's right here.

When rich On Tech returns, welcome back, to Rich on tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one on one.

That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

I've been saying those numbers for four years now.

Yes, this is year number four of this show, if you can believe it.

I love that.

During Okay, last segment, I talked about how twenty sixteen, all these people are posting bobo.

I guess I guess that was the first time you heard of it.

He just went through his camera roll and posted like one hundred pictures from twenty sixteen.

I'm going through his social media.

I am laughing so hard.

He's like, I'm saying, how like silly that is, And he's like, no, it's actually really fun.

And so he had a lot of things happening in that year.

Oh, it's way more.

I just didn't post everything that.

But you just did that.

Yeah, just said you talked about it.

Yeah I didn't.

I noticed it, but I didn't.

I didn't know it was a trendy thing to do.

Okay, And I was like, oh, well, now let's you know, yeah, just talk about it.

We had some great pictures that you posted.

This new Google Gemini Personalized Intelligence, personal Intelligence.

I asked it about my notable highlights in twenty sixteen, not very notable.

I had a family Halloween.

Told me my one kid was dressed as a skeleton, my other was Mickey Mouse.

I went to a wedding in October, my cousin celebrated my birthday, wrapped up with the New Year's celebration in San Diego, went back to the East Coast to spend time with my siblings.

Me and my wife went to a con sure at the Crypto dot Com Arena, which was Staple Center back then.

You can't say that anymore.

What good.

It's still with the Crypto.

The other place doesn't exist.

They get so mad when you bring it up, do they really?

I just thought it was wild that Staples, like the plasure you literally buy like Staples and paper clips, has enough money to buy you know, I had the name arena.

Yeah, I mean it was that was big.

I mean I was here when they built that.

That's aging me a little bit, dating me.

All right, let's go to be here a long time.

Forty two years.

I've probably been in La for I got to add it up probably twenty five years.

Wow.

Yeah, it's been a while.

I mean, it's been a while.

Yeah, but I off and on because I left, you know, so I got to add it up.

But I left.

Every time I left for like something, I would come back in between.

I don't know why.

You know, it popped up in my feet the other like literally a day or two ago.

The picture you on Price is right?

Oh, when you had the loan Surfer hit.

That was a long time ago that I will tell you.

Being on Price is right.

I mean, obviously that was really fun back in the day.

It's funny.

My kid loves to watch it.

But your brain goes to mush.

My brain was jello.

When Bob Barker, that's seat dating myself again.

When Bob Barker, when I mean he didn't call me down Rod Roddy did.

But when Bob Barker, you know, said okay, next time I'm up for bid, and he said, what's your bid, mister DeMuro whatever he said, and I'm not kidding, I could not think.

There was no brain activity in my head at all.

I was just like, what is happening right now?

And I screamed out.

The first thing I heard from the audience, which was seven hundred dollars for a sewing machine.

I had no idea how much a sewing machine was.

Definitely wasn't seven hundred.

All right, let's go to h Let's go to Walter.

Line three.

You're on in a Temecula Walter.

You're on with Rich?

Hey, Rich?

How you doing?

I'm doing shows content always love it good.

I'm glad.

I'm glad.

All my hard work is paying off.

Thank you?

Oh man, it is.

So here's my question.

I currently have an HP printer, but I feel that I keep buying cartridges all the time, and man, I'm not printing that much stuff.

And this is just for home use, not every day printing.

So do you have do you recommend any certain printer there'll be more pocket friendly on the cartridge side.

That'll have to be changing these cartridges all the time because then they could get pretty pricey.

Oh yeah, And it feels like there's a leak sometimes.

Like I remember when I was using cartridges, I'm like, wait, I just replaced this, what is happening?

And then it would just it just felt like I was spending so much on these cartridges, and I you know, I didn't really print a lot either.

I mean the kids will print like color stuff all the time, but like for me, I'm mostly printing stuff for this show.

I will tell you the two printers that I've been testing lately that I will tell you I like them both.

They're the ink tank printers, so you've actually filled them up with the liquid ink, which I know sounds messy, but it's actually quite an easy process.

And I have been using both of these probably for the better part of months now, and the ink lasts a really long time.

It seems to be cheaper, and it just seems to be like you're more in control with this liquid ink than you are with these cartridges that are like I don't know if they're printing them or making them out of gold, but why are printer ink cartridges so expensive?

And then if you try to use one that's not the brand, your machine is gonna yell at you.

It's gonna say, oh, oh, oh, you want to put that in here?

Oh, just hope you don't like warranties.

It's like, okay, okay, it's like, calm down, little machine.

So I will tell you the two that I've been testing.

Number one is called the HP Smart Tank fifty one hundred and I didn't think I was gonna like this one.

I don't even want to be like hateful towards HP, but I was kind of like, ah, it's HP.

I just switched from their printer with all their you know, the cartridges that were so expensive, and I was on the subscription program and I won't even tell you what I did there that was really dumb.

But if you need some cartridges for this machine, I might have them at home.

Anyway.

This ink tank, the fifty one hundred, has been great.

I love the way it prints.

I will say.

The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that the paper is kind of on top.

It's like a top feeder, which I don't like.

I wish it was like the on the bottom.

And then the other thing I don't like is it takes a little bit to start up, like just when you first print for the day.

It takes a little bit to go through some sort of routine to print.

So that's it.

But otherwise I really like that and the ink glass fair.

The other one I like is the Epsen.

I know you've heard these advertised the Eco tank.

The one that I'm testing specifically is the ET twenty nine eighty and I think that that one's good.

It's an all in one.

You may not need all of that stuff, but this one prints really fast.

I've had zero problems with it.

I will say the quality of the print that comes out is slightly better on the HP for what it's worth.

But I will tell you I like both of these equally.

I like the software a lot on the epsin the screen, the little like screen that's on it is tough to see, but it's not a deal breaker.

But I like the software that comes with it, like the app and that stuff.

But those are two solid choices.

Go with the ink tank, you know, I think that these are just easier to use instead of the cartridges.

The cartridges are just it's the razor principle.

You know.

You go to Best Buy.

You see the stacked up to the ceiling on thousands of these printers are fifty dollars.

You're like, oh cool, I need a new printer.

Well, you're not thinking about how much the cartridges cost when you have to replace them.

And so my rule of thumb is, if you're buying a printer, take the extra ten seconds to figure out how much these cartridges are going to cost you after you buy that printer, because there are so many of them out there.

And again it's the razor you're buying.

The blades, they're not they're not making money on the handle.

They're not making money on the printer itself.

Somehow they're making money on the blades and the blades are those cartridges?

Great question, Walter in Temecula, Thanks for the call today.

Let's see here, let's go to Let's see Thurman has been waiting patiently in Massachusetts.

Thurman, you're on with Rich yes An the you know what, people listen at all different times, So unless you're live, who who, it doesn't even matter.

I'm live you are, but you know someone may be listening tomorrow, so who knows.

Well.

You mentioned a while back the Google Photos magic eraser, and I that was great, except that a lot of time I've moved a lot of pictures over to my PC, uh and they're no longer on the iPhone.

So I was looking for a photo editor that would work on under a Windows PC and I just couldn't find one.

You can do manual erasing, but that magic eraser, where that's you know, outlines of a person that you want to get rid of I can't find an app that does that on a PC.

You don't need an app, you just need Gemini.

It's built in, so you can.

You can go to Gemini dot Google dot com and or you know, I mean, does Google Photos not have it built in on the website.

No, it doesn't.

It doesn't doesn't.

It doesn't work on a PC.

Just interesting, Yeah, I guess it doesn't.

I'm looking here.

It doesn't have it there.

I think the easiest thing to do is go to Gemini dot Google dot com and you can try this.

Just just take a picture and drag it in there and just say remove whatever you want, the person, the object, whatever you need changed.

It will change it and it will keep it the rest of the picture intact.

And so it's it's really good.

It's basically using the same exact technology.

I actually think in some ways this is better.

But that's an easy way to do it.

There's some other there's some other like Canva can do this, like Canva can can take things out.

I'm not sure, lough.

I have a paid Canva account, so I'm not sure how much they give you for free on that.

But you can go into Canva and they have some good editing tools.

Let's see.

I also have hang on, I've got I'm looking through my I'm looking through my bookmarks.

Here, I've got a whole bunch of bookmarks for photography.

Let's see, like web based photo editor.

The problem is I went through and okay, here's one.

There's one called okay this, try this one clean up dot pictures.

So clean up dot pictures.

That's a website.

You can drag a photo in there and it will remove things.

It's got like a little eraser that you can move remove things from there.

But I think the best is really Gemini.

It's so good, it's so fast, and I just stopped using anything else because it's just so good.

But that's an easy one to do, and I think they give view at least a free level.

I think you could do like ten edits for free or something like that.

It just sort of depends.

But are you just removing a lot of people from your pictures or what?

Well, you know, average say somebody's they're about usually five people standing in front of the room on cathedral.

I just don't need.

Okay, so you're getting like other people?

Oh it can it can easily do that too.

Yeah.

The other one, the other one that people don't really talk about is let's see what the website is for this, But it's Adobe Express and they've got Adobe Express.

You know, a Canva has really taken over the world with all these editing programs and things.

But like Adobe has a free level of what's called Adobe Express and they let you do a lot of stuff in there too.

And Adobe obviously is a very smart company when it comes to all this stuff, like they've been doing photo editing forever, so they have some really good tools there.

So I'll link that up on the website as well.

That's Adobe dot com slash Express.

But really I think the easiest way to remove someone or an object or anything or modify picture at this point is Gemini dot Google dot com.

But Thurman, I will link up all those resources that I just mentioned.

All right, coming up, I will tell you why the FTC is banning GM from selling your driver data plus more of your calls at eighty eight rich one oh one.

This is rich On Tech.

Welcome back to rich On Tech.

Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.

So the FTC is banning General motors from selling drivers location and behavior data for five years.

This is because apparently they're subsidiary on Star, which you know, is built into a lot of GM cars, collected precise location data every few seconds without clear customer consent.

The data was sold to third parties, including consumer reporting agencies.

That means insurance companies got a hold of it, and for some people it allegedly led to higher insurance rates or even denied coverage.

Can you imagine that happening.

You're like, what's going on my insurance?

Why does it keep going up?

Oh?

I'm a horrible driver.

So now GM must get permission before collecting or sharing driver data, and drivers have to be able to see, delete, and opt out of that collection.

They'll also have the ability to turn off precise location tracking.

This is one of those things that you kind of know your car's doing spying on you, but you didn't really know until you see a lawsuit like this or whatever.

This is a settlement come out.

But anyway, Yeah, I wonder why they love building on Star into so many cars, probably making them a lot of money on the back end.

There.

All right, let's go to Cheryl in Calabasas.

Cheryl hold on before we go to Cheryl, hang on, how do I put Cheryl back on hold?

I got one quick comment here from Alex.

I just want to bring them on.

Let's see, can I just do that?

Alex?

You there?

Oh no, now I dropped Eryl.

Whoops.

Okay, and I don't hear Alex at all.

Alex A you there?

No, yes, there you are pay well.

You have a quick comment about the printer situation.

Yeah, this is something I suggest to a lot of at least my friends.

If you guys are if somebody's at home just printing black and white, you know, text documents, paperwork like that.

I think laser jet printers are super awesome.

We have a brother printer.

I just use generic laser jet cartridges just for printing black and white fixtures.

If you're printing color, whole another story.

What you suggest is probably the best way.

But for just black and white, laser jet I think is the way to go.

You raise a great point, Alex.

This is what I had.

I had the Brother, the cheap o brother one.

It was like, I mean, I can give you the number I'm seeing on Amazon, but I had one for like ten years.

It's the Brother hl L two four zero five W and it's just a simple compact black and white printer.

This thing was a workhorse in my house for like ten years.

I loved it.

The cartridges were not even that expensive.

I think I bought Imitator ones and my kids bugged me.

They said, why don't we have a color printer?

I said, because have you seen the ink prices?

Do you want to go to college?

I'm not, you know?

And so it is.

This is great and I agree.

Thank you for reminding I didn't.

I didn't know with the with the caller like what they wanted, but since they were talking about cartridges, I assume they wanted color.

But I will remember for next time to always recommend this, because yes, you're right.

If you don't need the color, just go out the black and white printer from brother.

Awesome.

Thank you all right, Alex, thanks for chiming in with that.

Well, we lost our other caller, so Kenneth, you missed that.

All right, let's go to Let's go to Dale in Ontario.

Dale.

You're on with Rich?

Hey, Rich, thank you for taking my call.

Yeah, what's up?

I am?

This is a location sharing question.

I have Android at Galaxy S twenty four Ultra, which I love, and I'm using find hub to share my location with my brother.

Okay my brother.

My brother has an Apple has an iPhone.

Well, you can't expect those to work nicely, come on, I know, I know.

That's my question is is that is there an app or I mean it's something that we we only do it, we only use it every now and then.

But is there like an app that's free that interer platform?

Yes, there is, so if you're on the iPhone.

Obviously everyone's using find my on the iPhone.

I didn't know, so I know I know about the find what's it?

What's it called the find app?

Right on?

Ah, well, it's it's fine Hub.

It came installed on the phone.

Okay, so that's a Samsung specific app, right.

I suppose I have no idea.

This is oh interesting.

This is Google Okay, So this is Google's app.

Okay, So here's what i'd recommend.

You know, there's so many platforms for sharing location.

I think that Life three sixty is actually the best when it comes to sharing location cross platform Life three sixty, I think you know their whole thing, and it's the basis free.

You don't get you know, if you're just not doing a membership plan.

They give you basically what you need just to see where your other friend is, your family member, And I think that's probably the best way to do it.

Are you using the phone for the location or a device the phone?

Okay, so that's probably the I think that's the easiest way.

Is just you could both download Life three sixty, sign up for a sign up for that, and you can you know, again, it works on iPhone, works on Android.

That's probably going to be your easiest There might be some other ways to do it out there, but I just like that because it's clean and that is the purpose of that app, and you have clear kind of understanding of when it's sharing when it's not sharing what you're doing.

That's probably the easiest way to do it.

Dale sounds good.

Is it free?

Yeah?

It is free at the basis free.

Like you can you can easily see where people are on the map for free.

There are obviously paid accounts that do more like location history alerts when someone arrives or leaves the location.

But if you just want to see where that other person is on a map and you want to share that information, Life three sixty is a great way to do that cross platform.

So you are a lifesaver.

Thank you so much for your help.

All right, let me know how it works out a Dale and ocean side.

I think I said Ontario for some reason.

Alex was in Ontario.

Dale is an ocean side.

Uh, and now we know and we hung up on Cheryl, you did, don't say we I did?

Sorry, Cheryl, four years in, still learning this system.

All right.

Coming up, we're gonna talk scams with the YouTuber Kip Boga.

Scams coming up next.

Welcome back to Rich on tech Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

If you're shy you want to submit your question online, you can do that too, Rich on tech dot TV.

Hit contact.

Although this is the radio, so no one has to see her face.

Give me a call, all right.

My next guest is kit Boga.

He is very famous for his YouTube videos baically wasting time of scammers.

You know, there's so many scams out there, and there's a there's this kind of almost a cottage industry of people who fight back by just wasting the time of these scammers.

And then turning it into like entertaining videos.

Uh kiit poga.

Thanks so much for joining me.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here.

So how did you guts start it in this?

What?

What was kind of the why did you start doing this?

Yeah?

Well, I'm a software engineer, and eight years ago I heard about the tech support scam, the guys who pretend to be Microsoft and say that there's hackers onder your computer.

Are you familiar with that?

Oh?

Yeah, and it's still going on.

Yes, yes, So I heard about that, and I figured if I have never heard of this scam, I'm a millennial on the internet all day long, then surely my grandparents hadn't heard of it.

My mom wouldn't know about it.

And it kind of hit me in that moment that if my grandma or grandpa, who had dementia and Alzheimer's, would get a call from someone saying that there were hackers on their computer, that they would fall for it.

And I got this sort of spark of an idea, which was if I could spend twenty three minutes on the phone with the scammer, that was twenty minutes that they weren't talking to someone's grandma and it all blew up from there.

That's wild.

I was talking to a colleague the other day and he said he almost got scammed with this, Like they texted him a code to his Google account and then they called him and they said, hey, we need you to give me the code, and he kind of figured it out a little bit into it, but you know, obviously didn't want to lose his account, so we At first he didn't know, but when he realized he was onto the scam, he said, my goal was just to waste their time, and so he took like thirty to forty five seconds between each answer when they would ask him a question, and the person got so frustrated by the end they yelled some swear words at him and hung up.

Yeah, anyway, so this kind of stuff happens.

What do you feel like is the current state of scams today?

People do fall for this stuff.

Oh yeah, yeah, at an alarming rate, and I think it's getting even worse than when I started.

And part of it is because there you have crime syndicates, organized crime.

You have it's not just a couple guys in a call center or a couple of guys in their house anymore.

Going after a five hundred dollars gift card I have.

There there are scammers going after people's four one K.

There are scammers going after not five hundred dollars, but five hundred thousand dollars.

I have a lot of friends in law enforcement who say that there are like Artels, people who used to run drugs, saying, actually, we should get in the scam business.

It's it's a lot easier and we make a lot more money that way.

So I think I think that's a huge part of the problem.

And do you think people are ever recovering this money?

Like once it's gone, If you send money to someone that says, hey, send us one hundred thousand dollars, we're gonna We're going to refund you the fifty thousand, but there's some issues with our accounts and I can't do that right now, and I have to wait.

Will people ever see their money?

No, it's no.

I think it's best to say no.

There's I think you're describing what I refer to the recovery scam, which is maybe really important to talk about.

But after someone has been scammed, they're often targeted again by either the same group of scammers or another group that are going to say I'm here with the government or I'm an expert cyber criminal or cyber infrasecurity person who will get all your money back.

And it was just not the case.

So there's one two punch.

Yes, it's so sad.

So tell me some of these scams I mentioned one.

You called it the recovery scam.

Explain that briefly, like, what are you seeing out there so people understand.

Yeah, the recovery is pretty big.

The general concept is if you post online, in particular saying that you got scammed, maybe on Facebook, somewhere on social media, there will be scammers who immediately start messaging you or calling you saying that they can get your money back.

They'll say that they're with the government, police, or maybe that there's some kind of hacker that can hack the criminals.

But it is a lie, and it's it's almost all automated.

The second they see you post on your social media account that you got scammed, they're going to immediately send you messages saying that they can help you, but they it's just scammers.

They cannot help you.

Another big one I see would be investment scams, you know, and it's not just like the Ponzi schemes and things of the past, but some of these are really elaborate sounding AI technology.

We can if you put in ten thousand dollars, you're going to be able to guarantee a thirty percent return year over year and things like that.

But it's it just immediately gets sucked away by criminal organizations and you will never get it back.

I would say the third big one is tech support related scams.

There are still, like you said, there's still people every single day, calling, texting, emailing that say there's hackers on your computer or that there was a charge placed on your bank by by someone who's stole on your identity, and they will want to try to connect to your computer or your device to steal all of your money and to steal your whole life.

It's it's devastating.

Now you went so far as to start a software company, Sarafsecure dot com, which basically helps people protect themselves, because you said, like, and this happens all the time.

It's remote access to your computer.

People email me all the time and say, yeah, they made me download this program so they can look at something on my computer.

So you created a software program that actually at its base will deny those remote connections.

And then it also goes further explain what sarah secure is all about.

Yeah, so that was the number one email that I got as well, Fuck, someone has connected to my computer or my my family's computer.

I don't know what to do.

And when the scammer connects, even if you hang up the phone on them, even like even if you didn't give them money and you realized it was a scam, they have full access to your computer.

They can see your webcam, your files, your emails.

If you've logged into your bank now they can control your bank, they can see your passwords.

Right, our whole lives are on our computer.

So scammers aggressively try to gain access to your computer.

What sarah secure does is it's a free tool to remove all of those connections from someone's computer and block them.

It just was such a devastating problem.

Again, I have millions of people on YouTube that are commenting, and that was the biggest thing we saw, and so we said, well, let's solve it.

Let's make it harder for stammers to be able to attack people this way.

Can a kid install it on their parents' computer?

And lock it down so they can't change it.

I mean, I hate it sounds sad to have to do that, but it's like people need to know that.

Yeah, so we do have a like a family plan that's sort of like that the way, so we built it with my parents in mind or my grandparents in mind.

So one way that you could do it is set it up and install it on a family member's computer with their consent, and then get text alerts or email messages when when it looks like they're being scammed as well, which has been really powerful.

We've had a lot of people that have been able to prevent their families from getting scammed through that.

Why do you think that smart people fall for this stuff?

Because people always think like, oh, it's they don't know what they're doing or they're silly, But it's like smart people that fall for this stuff.

Why do you think that is?

Oh yeah, yeah, Well, some of it's timing, like the right place, right time.

I'll give you a quick example.

My mother in law, who knows what I do and is well educated on this, she had purchased some some kind of workout equipment on Amazon a handful of months ago.

She got an email a few days later that showed a treadmill purchase for you know, two thousand dollars and said to call this number if it was a fraudulent order.

And she called it and they were giving her hard time, and she printed the email and brought it over to my house and said, I don't understand what's going on.

I didn't order this treadmill because she had ordered some other like adjacent tech or like, yeah, it's similar to the fitness She she didn't even realize that it wasn't really Amazon and that it was a bunch of scammers.

Thankfully, she brought it to my house right, but she did call them and it was it was just the right time, the right place.

So I think that's part of it.

The other, the other hand, is the scammers they like make thousands and thousands of phone calls, millions of calls every year, and they're perfecting their scripts and their strategies to manipulate humans.

Basically, like they they know what makes us tick, what makes us scared, and what will make us fall for their for their scheme essentially.

So what's the what's the key takeaway?

Someone's listening, They're like, well, how do I protect myself.

I can't you know, I can't keep up on every scam that's south because there's always new ones.

But how what is the key takeaway?

Yeah, I would say, apart from taking a look at serfsecure dot com, the other really big way that I'd always tell people is watch out for urgency.

Almost every scam is going to have a sense of urgency.

Whether you think that you won one hundred million dollars or that you owe a million dollars, they're going to tell you have to do it right now.

And so you almost have to train yourself.

Like, if there's a sense of panic and someone telling you don't hang up the phone, listen to me right now, the best thing to do in that case is to hang up the phone.

The other tip I usually give out is like, it's okay to be skeptical.

I don't know about you, Rich, but like I kind of was raised that being skeptical and questioning things almost came across as rude.

But I think in today's age, especially with how easy it is for people to contact you on the Internet or your phone, you have to just be in that mindset of being a little skeptical when someone calls you to the blue and you don't recognize it.

Maybe you shouldn't trust them, and maybe you shouldn't go along with things.

You know what.

There is one one other scam that I figured out because I get a lot of emails from people on a daily basis and they're a wide variety, and I got one from someone who wanted to give away a grand a baby grand piano, and I replied and said, you know, I thought they were just asking me for help.

And I realized after like writing back, I was like, oh wait a second, this is a scam.

So they can come in any way, any shape, any form, and you just have to be on guard at all times in this day and age.

Because I ended up getting another email about a grand piano, I was like, Okay, here we go.

This is another scam anyway, so now you can put that on your list.

Thanks for joining me today, Kip Boga, really appreciate it.

I'll put the links to the YouTube page.

It's a channel is Kip Boga Show.

And then you've got Seraphsecure dot com.

I'll link those up on my website.

Rich On tech dot tv, thanks for being here today.

Yeah, absolutely, all right, coming up more of your calls eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.

Plus prices are going up again for another streaming service.

I'll tell you which one coming up next.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Kim was commenting call screen or Kim about the Apple Watch.

She said, when she fell off her scooter, her watch went off and asked if it needed to call nine one one.

So there you go.

It does work.

I mean it really, it saved a lot of lives.

I mean also the high and low heart rate notifications are also really helpful for people.

Interviewed a guy who literally had to go in for like what was it, like a bypass surgery, some sort of heart So, oh, you had a pacemaker installed because the Apple Watch told him something was wrong.

I mean, it's really, it's it's changed a lot of people's lives.

Spotify is increasing prices across all of their plans, so that's gonna happen next month, and people are already getting emails.

Basically, if you're on the individual plan, that'll go up to twelve ninety nine, student plan to six ninety nine, duo to eighteen ninety nine, Family to twenty one ninety nine, So that's like a dollar or two per plan.

First price hike in the US in about a year and a half.

Spotify is not blaming inflation or rising costs.

They say the higher prices reflect the value of what they're delivering.

So just like this is the new law or the new rule, it's like death taxes, streaming service prices will go up.

That's what we have now in this world.

Let's go to Jimmy in Los Angeles.

Jimmy, you're on with Rich.

How can I help?

Good afternoon, mister Rich.

No, I have a Android cell phone and.

I look at it sometimes.

I look at a lot of animal programs or or stuff like that, you know, an hour like to know.

Isn't it a way I can take this cell phone, uh and put it on a computer?

The movies that I watch sometimes, can I put them on a computer or burn them into a computer?

Well?

What okay?

I mean?

Are these on like a YouTube type site?

Yeah?

Why can't you just watch YouTube on the computer.

I'd like to have the tape myself so I can look at it one hundred times.

Okay, So you want to, Okay, so you want to you want a like a recording of this basically, yes, exactly.

Okay, well, if it's on YouTube, there's not there There are ways of downloading from YouTube, but a I can't truly recommend them because it's against their terms.

But if it's your own if I was talking in terms of your own video, so if this was your own video that you were downloading from the website, there are some sites.

There used to be one called Cobalt Tools that doesn't work anymore, so that would really that used to be a really easy way to download these videos.

But the thing is, this gets kind of complicated.

I mean, I think you just bookmark these videos on YouTube, create a playlist that you know, it could be private only you see, and then you just go to your desktop and see these as for like downloading the videos and transferring them to your computer, that's just like really complicated.

There.

Yes, there are ways of doing this, for sure, you know, but I don't think you're gonna find an app in the app store on the Android that will let you download from YouTube because Google does not allow that in they are terms of service.

You're not really gonna find an app that does that.

Now, you may find a web site that will let you do that, and you might be able to do that, but it's gonna take you so long to go through this process.

It's you know, it's not really worth the time.

You could do a screen recorder of your phone while you're watching the video that's not very clean, but you know, there, I'm really at a at a loss here because there are ways of doing this, but it's just none of it is clean, and you know it's all in the gray area too.

So there are services.

I'm a little bit hesitant to recommend them on a radio show like this because you know, I just it's just one of those things where you may just have to find this yourself.

Now, with that said, there is there are some legitimate reasons why you might want to download your own YouTube videos, and there are many tools that will allow you to do that, but they are presented in that way, right like I have all these videos I uploaded and I want to download them, and so okay, these these services can maybe help you do that, but I can't really tell you like a simple, easy way to get this video from your phone to your computer without using a third party app that you know you may not even look on the app store, like the Google Player or the app store you may have to go to like installing a third party app, which I can't even you know, that's tricky, So I don't, Jimmy, I don't really have a good answer for you.

I'm sorry.

I would just make a playlist on YouTube of the stuff you want to watch over and over and just go to your desktop and do it that way.

Let's go to Bob in Pennsylvania.

Bob, you're on with Rich Iby Rich.

Thank you very much.

Yes, I was calling to see if you can answer a question I have about the Pruss to talk walkie talkies.

One of the brands rapid radios is what I hear advertised, okay, and I was wondering can you get do you have communication with them whenever you're out of cell service or do they need cell service to operate?

In other words, you're out the remote area of the woods.

Yeah, no, self service will be substitutes.

Not necessarily.

So the way I'm looking at these, I've not tested these personally, but I actually I heard about these a long time ago because someone told me, like, hey, look into them, and it seems like, you know, it seems like all the marketing is like, hey, these things work anywhere, but it seems like at the end of the day it is going over an LTE connection.

They make it very simil and push to talk, almost like Nextel back in the day.

But it does say rapid Radios nationwide LTE, so that would lead me to believe that those are all through LTE.

Now, they do have one called my Emergency Radio and that is VHF VHF UHF.

That would would likely work without, you know, a cellular connection because it is a traditional walkie talkie.

Now how far that works, I don't know.

You'd have to you know, you have to look in their writing.

But as far as something in the middle of the woods, Bob, do you have an iPhone?

Well, no, it's an Android.

Okay, Well, you know, depending on the Android, the newer ones have satellite connectivity.

And if you just want peace of mind, you can add starlink.

Let's see starlink texting.

You can add starlink texting nine one one to a lot of different smartphones for free from T Mobile.

So if you just want that peace of mind to be able to text nine one one, I'll put a link on the website rich on tech dot TV.

It's t mobile text to nine one one.

Anyone can install this on their phone four three just for getting in touch with nine one one over satellite.

It's a great service.

Rich on Tech dot TV for the link.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich Tomuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one eight eight A seven four to two four one zero one.

We'll get to your calls in just a moment.

But you got to know about this.

They security researchers found some serious flaws in lots of earbuds and headphones.

It's all related to this Google Fast Pair feature.

So if you ever have an Android phone and you've got a pair of earbuds and you put them nearby, they sort of show up on the screen says, hey do you want to pair with these?

And so hundreds of millions of headphones, earbuds, and speakers use this technology because it's really simple and it's really easy.

Apple has similar technology on their phonees too, So this issue affects devices from brands like Sony, JBL, Jabra, Logitech Pixel Buds.

People were able to connect these things from about fifty feet away.

The attack is called whisper pair.

It lets someone h silently hijack your audio device, mess with your sound, injected audio, even turn the microphone on and listen.

They theoretically could track your location too, perhaps, but I would say that's probably not as common.

But anyway, here's the deal.

If you have a pair of headphones and you're on Android, you've got to update them so that they can't be vulnerable to this attack.

So Google has issued patches, They're working with manufacturers.

You can't turn this feature off easily at least.

So the bottom line is, here's the fix.

If you have a pair of earbuds and you're on Android, download the Companion app for those earbuds.

You probably never did this before and look in the settings and see if there's a firmware update for your earbuds.

So basically, you have to update the firmware on your earbuds, your speakers, and your headphones by downloading the Companion app.

So, if you have a Sony speaker, Sony earbuds, find the Sony app that works with those earbuds in the play Store, download it and you know it'll show your earbuds in there, and then you would update the software or the firmware rather in the setting.

Same thing, Jabra, Logitech, whatever you got.

For instance, I've got a pair of Bows headphones, and if I go I've got the Bows app on my phone, I can look into the settings and it will say if there's a firmware update for these headphones.

Similarly, I'm testing this little Marshal speaker, which sounds great by the way.

You know that it goes Marshall amps that speaker.

Same thing.

It's got a companion app.

Typically you wouldn't really install these companion apps because you're just like, well, my headphones work, why would I need that?

Hey, let you dial in settings, change things good, stuff like that, So definitely do that.

If you got Android, got an email from Gerald, I've got an S twenty five.

I cannot separate notification sounds from my emails, text ring, or doorbell.

I'd like to be able to make them sound different.

Please help.

Well this took me a minute to figure out.

But if you go into your settings on Android on Samsung, rather settings Notifications, and then you go into Advanced Settings, you'll see manage notification categories for each app, and now you should be able to change those notification sounds for each app.

Let me just confirm that that is the case.

So I'm gonna go into one of these and let's see.

Does it give me a hmmm?

Still looking for the sound here?

I don't really it used to be you would just go into the into the Okay, hold on, is this it notific categories?

I got to look at this more because it seems like there's got to be a way to change the sound for each app.

That would just makes sense.

But I gotta I gotta find out how to do that.

Let's go to Kathy in Los Angeles.

Kathy, you're on with RH Hi.

Hi, what's up?

Hi?

Okay?

Y?

I did the I phone up?

Hy?

You said Hi again?

Sorry you said I phone Hi.

Anyway, I did it yesterday.

I have had drop call like NonStop, and I'm kind of shocked that I'm still online with you.

We lost you.

Do you hear me?

Hello?

Yes?

Do you hear me?

Yes?

Okay?

Anyway, drop calls after I did the software update?

So you updated your phone to twenty six, the iOS twenty six, the newest one, and now you're dropping calls?

Yes, yes, yes.

And it's in places you didn't drop calls before.

No, I'm sitting in sitting in my living room.

Okay, what what service do you have?

HT?

Okay, and it's a five G I've phone fourteen Okay.

I mean, look, there could be a connection between these two things.

You know, when when software changes, there are things that change on the phone, so that that could definitely be a problem.

It could be also coincidence.

Has this been happening over and over or just a couple of times, or just you.

Know, it happened all last night?

Okay, So what I would say, there's a couple of things you could do.

Number one, you can try restarting your phone.

That's the simplest way.

I did that.

Okay, did that.

There's also in the there is a way to kind of reset your cellular connection.

But the problem is if you do that, you're going to be resetting all of your Bluetooth and your Wi Fi.

So it's kind of annoying.

But do you want to I'll tell you where that is just in case.

So if you if you go into your settings and then you go under general and then scroll all the way down, it says transfer or reset phone.

I know this is scary because we're getting into like erasing stuff, but be careful here, don't don't.

Don't go through these menus fast.

That's the last thing you want to do.

And then there's a button at the bottom that says reset, And if you tap that, I know it sounds scary because it's saying reset, it doesn't do anything.

Then you get a whole bunch of secondary options reset, reset all settings, reset network settings, delete all e sims, reset keyboard, reset handwriting, reset home screen, reset location cancel.

So the one that I would recommend trying is reset network settings.

And if you do that, it's basically going to wipe all of your network settings clean.

That's your Bluetooth, that's your cellular, and that's your Wi Fi.

And once it does that, it's going to handshake with the network again.

And maybe it's just like whatever it needs to download to sound better or stay connected will work.

But your phone, the hardware on your phone is not changed in any way, so you still have the same antenna, you still have the same signal that you're getting from the tower.

So it shouldn't really affect this long term.

But there could be an issue with this software that you know seemingly is effectiveness to me.

Yeah, but again, you know, you can also give it a little bit of time.

Sometimes after a software update, your phone also needs to download some additional software from the carrier so that you know, it does it in the background, So that could be happening.

But in general, I would say, don't do anything right now, just kind of monitor this and if you're using your phone over the next week and this still keeps happening, then I might do the solution that I mentioned and see if that helps.

But I wouldn't do anything like over, you know, just right away, because sometimes these things have a way of fixing themselves.

It could have been a fluke.

I mean, it could have been that you updated your software and AT and T was working on the pole outside your house.

I mean, these things happen for sure, all right.

One last question.

Sure you have a test lass three?

Okay?

And I want to get an external CD players to play my CDs.

Now, do not make fun of me.

My kids think I'm a dinosaur, but I would like to control it.

Like any recommendations on what player to buy.

I don't even know if you'd be able to connect a CD player to a Tesla.

How would you connect it?

I'm wondering, Well, I went online.

It's like a USB.

Okay, but I'm I mean, I mean I have a Tesla and I'm just trying to figure out if you could plug in a USB to the Tesla.

I mean, I know you, I know that Tesla has USB ports, right, but will a CD?

Let mean, this is the first time here.

Maybe it's like you have to go into the control center and recognize new media.

Yeah, I mean, hmm, I mean what about okay, what about And I'm not even sure that this that you can do that?

Okay.

It says you could theoretically add a USB powered CD player through the cars USB port.

I have not tried that, but if if it works, I mean, you could go on Amazon and buy one of these CD players and try it and plug it in.

If it doesn't work, return it.

But that is no right, that's the first I've heard of that.

I mean, let me just see this.

Okay.

So here's a CD player.

Yeah, I mean it's going to be expensive.

I mean there's some I'm looking at the prices here.

I'd have to find one that I know works.

This is wild.

It's kind of expensive.

Some of them.

It's like one hundred dollars and it might you know, don't forget with CDs.

It might also if the CD player is not high quality, you might get jumps during your songs.

Oh yeah.

The other thing you could do is a obviously, you can play music through your phone through Bluetooth, which it sounds like you don't want to do, but that's an easy way to do it.

You can also use a flash drive.

You know in your glove compartment, you've got a little flash drive in there.

You could plug that in.

But that would mean I need to take my CDs and transfer it.

To Yeah, but that's pretty easy.

There's a there's a lot of software that will rip CDs, so I mean you could get yeah, oh yeah, that would be I think that would be your Here's what I'll tell you, Kathy, what I think you should do, which I think is the absolute simplest solution.

Okay, you can take your you can take your CDs, you can rip them to the to the m P three's and then you go to YouTube music.

So you go to YouTube dot music dot com.

You literally drag those files onto that website and they will appear on your phone inside the YouTube Music app.

And then you could just connect that to your car and listen on Bluetooth and that's doesn't you know it almost doesn't cost you anything to do that, and it's you know, you get I think you could store like fifty thousand songs and it's your music.

It seems like time consuming.

I I agree.

But didn't you say you have kids?

Yeah, they're forty and thirty eight, and they think I'm insane.

So well, isn't isn't that the role of children?

My kids are eleven and fourteen and they think I'm insane.

Yeah, yeah, your kids are young.

Just wait, and I think my parents are insane.

If they adore you.

Just wait, why.

Don't they throw out the stuff that's expired in their pantry?

That's insane to me, But this is what parents do.

But I think, I mean, yes, I would say, look, if you want the simple way, try the CD.

If you just want to do that, I think it's you're It's funny.

You're driving the most high tech car in America and you're going to put a CD player.

I love it.

I'm going to be seventy two.

I think I've earned the right to play my CDs.

And I've got some really unusual CDs, unusual artists.

Sure, which you know it's going to be really hard to find it.

Okay, can burn it.

I will.

I will have to.

I will have to find a recommendation for a seton player fail you Yeah, absolutely, Hello at rich on tech dot TV.

We'll keep this going.

Uh, hello at rich on tech dot TV.

That is I mean, now I want to try this in my car.

It's been years since I thought about putting a CD player, but now I will try this for sure, and we'll have to report back on this.

Thanks for the call, Kathy eighty eight rich one on one back after this, Welcome back to rich on tech.

I'm still sitting here trying to figure out how to make the notifications different for apps individual apps on the Samsung.

I think I figured it out.

Let me see here, Okay, so if I go there and then eighty to eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one, okay, so I think I figured it out here it is Okay, this is a little weird, and maybe I'm going around in circles with this, but it seems like you have to do two things to enable if you want different apps on your androids, specifically Samsung, to make different sounds like maybe you want your you know Doorbell to make one sound a text message to make another.

You can go in and it looks like you have to go into settings, Notifications, Advance Settings and then tap the option to toggle it on for manage notification categories for each app.

Seems like that's number one.

Then you go into apps and then you tap an app like I put Airbnb, and I go into notifications and now it says categories, it unlocks that, and now if I scroll to general, it gives me the option to choose a sound for that app, like a specific sound.

Seems like that's the way to do it.

Let me just go into sounds real quick, just to make sure if there's not like an easier way.

Yeah, I think that's really it interesting.

That's that's a little bit.

I guess you gotta know what you're doing to do that.

But I'll put all those instructions on the website.

Rich on tech dot TV, we got to comment from Stella and Redondo.

Stella, what's up?

Uh?

Oh you there?

Stella?

Stella?

Okay, well Stella, can't I guess you know, some people think they're gonna be waiting for a long time, and so they put their phone on speaker they go, they water the plants.

Let's go to Joan in San Diego.

Joan, you're on with Rich.

Hi.

Rich Hi.

I'm looking well lately with the gold price of gold and silver just skyrocketing.

I've collected over the years, and I'm I'm kind of looking to maybe buy a digital met precious metal tech detector.

I've tried all the chemical types kits and things, and they're just not very reliable.

And I don't know if they showed any visit the tech show.

I mean maybe they didn't need to.

But I called the company in China to get a quote on one, and for their lower model, lower end model, it was fifteen thousand dollars.

Oh my god.

What what company was that?

It was v Ran.

It's called a vr H five.

Okay, that sounds uh sounds like you're gonna like take over the world with that thing.

Yeah, it sounds like a superhero movie.

I've looked at him on Walmart and there you can buy something from you know, four hundred to forty three hundred, but not a single one has any reviews.

Yeah, which is odd, and I just feel weird buying something like this, you know.

I don't know.

I went to the company because they wanted to buy directly from the company.

How much do you want to spend.

I'd like to spend a I'd like to be under a couple grand.

What about going into a coin shop and asking them what they use, Well, that is a great idea.

I know the two ones in town use chemical because I've been in there and watched.

Them do it, right, But they'll know, they'll know the brands to look for, you know, for a consumer.

I mean I'm just looking online right now, and yeah, you're right.

I mean, the high end ones are super expensive, and of course then you have the ones that are like five six hundred dollars, but who knows if they work because it's not like Amazon is really selling a large number of these, you know what I mean.

So it's tough to get like a take on.

Let me just see, like five gold tester.

It's like buying a metal detector.

You know, you get a cheap one and you know what it's going to happen, right.

You know, And even just searching like Amazon for these things, there's not really a simple I mean, here's here's one.

This one's two hundred and fifteen dollars.

It has a decent amount of reviews, but it's only got three point seven, which means probably not very good.

But I would, I would lean upon one of these shops and just go in there and talk to them.

It sounds like you already know you're familiar with some of them.

I would, you know, go in and just ask them, say like, hey, I'm looking for some of that's under five hundred bucks, Like what do you recommend?

What brand?

Where should I be looking here?

And they may say, oh, yeah, this is the one that all the you know, all the people use from Amazon.

That's cheap, or they may say, oh you're you're it's not even worth buying this unless you're gonna spend fifteen thousand dollars, got it?

You know what I mean?

Good idea?

Yeah, okay, thank you.

And I'm sure you know I see on your notes here you said did you see him at CES?

I did not.

But you know what I'll do next year, Joan, I will be on the lookout for a gold Tester.

But this one on Amazon, this misar m I z ar uh.

You know, I don't know if you saw that one came across, but people seem to like it.

The problem is let's see thirty day refund replacement.

You might you know, you might be able to return it, but it looks like it's kind of a third party thing, so it may not be that easy, so I'd be very careful.

There.

Good question.

Interesting for sure.

I love the variations we get on this show, get a lot of varied things.

Rich on tech dot tv is the website coming up.

Oh, I got a great app.

Look for it now on your phone.

It's called Zoe Health.

It's available for iPhone and Android.

We're gonna talk to one of the co founders of that company.

Coming up next.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

The website rich on tech dot tv links to everything I talk about there.

I was in Trader Joe's and I saw a woman scanning food items with her phone, and I said, what are you doing there?

And she goes, Oh, I use this app to tell me if this is healthy or not.

I said, oh, that's interesting, And so she was using the app called Yuka.

And I did a little research and I found there's a whole bunch of these apps.

Bobby approved Yuka.

There's another one called Zoe which I ended up getting in touch with them and we talked about Zoe Health, and I've grown to really like this app.

You basically use it to scan food and it gives it a score from one to one hundred based on all kinds of stuff.

And so let's hear from Professor Tim Spector, co founder of Zoe, to explain what this is all about.

So what is Zoe?

How do you describe what it is?

It's a nutrition science company that is really leading the revolution in gut health and trying to give people the best tools that we can give to improve their choice of foods.

And there's so many apps out there that help with health.

Do you think that this has been a good thing for people, the ability of them to scan things into research using their phone.

I think apps are empowering people to take control against all the big food companies that are trying to steer them in the wrong direction.

So it's really complex nutrition, and that's why we need AI and tech tools to help everybody make these choices.

It's really not that easy.

And so suddenly we're now in a position where we have these tools to help us every day because the food choices we make every day of our lives are the most important things we can do for our health.

What are we up against when it comes to these choices.

We're up against big food and false labeling, false health claims.

Everybody bombarding people with extra vitamins, extra protein, or new added sweeteners, low calorie.

All these messages are all false, disguising the fact that most of the foods they average American is eating are really bad for them, actually making them hungrier, making them sicker.

So we definitely need tools to fight back against these giants and all their propaganda.

And how do you think Zowe does that?

Zoe does that by giving people tools based on science.

We've been doing a hard science for over eight years now, looking at three hundred thousand people that have done these tests, so we know exactly how people respond to foods.

We know what the food companies are trying to do, and our scientists have really given us the antidote to that the food industries scientists who are trying to tempt us down the wrong path.

And what does the app do if I scan a food?

Tell me what that does?

The app is able to you to snap a picture of any food on your plate or in a store, and it will tell you exactly what's in it, the ingredients.

It tells you.

How much fiber, how much proteins are there, and it will also tell you it's processing risk, so how risky the actual chemicals and ingredients and mix are for your health.

Up to now, we've had very broad descriptions of what is ultra processed food in court that's sixty percent of the American diet, seventy five percent of children's diets.

But it's too broad.

We can't cut out that much food.

So we've focused on is to sorry and say, what's the twenty five percent that's really high risk?

So it has additives that are bad few, it's hyper palatable, it makes you overeat them.

They're really soft and easy to digest, so you get that burst of energy and carries without even thinking about it.

And it's these these tricks the food companies are doing that we have now logged into our app so that when you go to the store you can make the smart choice and avoid the very worst offenders and sometimes have ultra processed foods that are actually reasonably good for you.

And how does this compare to other apps?

Or so there's a couple of apps that allow you to scan out there.

How do you think you're taking an approach that might be different from them or is it all the same.

Our approach is different.

It's more holistic than the other apps.

The ones that I know have say a list of all the additives in and merely listed them out, so you just rank them.

If they have an additive, they're bad for you and therefore that's the end of it.

Whereas we know that some of these additives in food might actually be good for you, so some of the absids might be vomit them in cea for example a score by g acid.

And so what we've done is look to those additives only worried about the ones that are bad for health, that have been shown to be bad for health.

And then we've got these other categories like make you overeat and the category density of the food, different constituents of the structure of the food.

So it's much more holistic picture rather than just relying on addatives alone.

How much of the app is helping you in informing you versus selling you?

Are we trying?

Is the app just meant to a vector to get people to buy the supplement or is it actually there to help folks.

The reason it's free is to educate people and to help folks and to really move us away from the power of the food industry.

And that's the predominant use of this app.

We want to educate America about what good food is, how you can use technology to pick it, and how you can pick the right foods that help you and your gut health.

How can people rest assured that the information they're seeing this app is not biased in any way.

Zoe is a science led company that's published over seventy peer reviewed publications.

We recently had our gut Health test published in the world's most prestigious journal, Nature, and so we have a whole team of scientists working on these projects.

They come from universities and academia, highly distinguished people, and so we are reputation based on our unbiased approach to science.

If the science tells us something, that's what we put in the app.

So the cool thing about the app is not only does it get you to recognize highly risk processed foods, but it also allows you every day to take pictures of your meals and you get a snapshot of what that's scoring in terms of your general health and for your gut health, and you do that every day over weeks, you can start tracking things like your fiber remounts, your protein levels, and the diversity of different plants.

Because what we want to do is to get Americans to really start thinking about food from point of view their gut microbes.

That's why we've got to try rakka in there that says how many different plants you're having over a week, because we want people to get to thirty plants a week, and that's what our science is telling us is the optimum amount.

For your gut health.

We also want people to have more fermented foods, so you can track how many of those you're getting.

We want you have colorful foods, We want people to reduce their snacking, all kinds of things.

That are good for your gut health.

So all no, it's a multi purpose toolkit really to improve your health and make the best food choices.

And I guess the final question is what's the benefit of all this.

What's the benefit of improving our health or improving the gut in the way we eat.

We believe that about seventy to eighty percent of all the common diseases in America can be prevented if everyone was on an optimum diet as opposed to the standard American diet.

So being able to shift that is really important.

And in terms of individuals, what that means is if you switch to the healthiest diet you can, you will gain an extra ten years of healthy life, so that you're pushing away those diseases by ten years.

So that has a huge impact on millions and millions of people.

There you have it once again.

That is Professor Tim Spector, co founder of Zoe.

The app is called Zoe Health.

I really enjoy this app.

Look for it on iOS or Android.

It is free to scan foods.

I just scanned my It was a seaweed snack that got one hundred.

I scanned Bobo's famous Amos chocolate chip cookies that gets a twenty.

Enjoy Occasionally he just shrugs.

I enjoyed.

Right now.

Feedback coming up next right here on rich on Tech.

Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Two items of note before we open up the feedbag man.

This show Flew by Apple is taking on Adobe for creators.

They've got a new Apple Creator studio.

This is a subscription program that bun a lot of their creative apps like Final cut Pro, Logic Pro, pixel Mater Pro for one low price.

It's kind of their answer to Adobe's Creative Cloud.

Let's see how much is it a month?

I think it's thirteen dollars a month.

Works on Mac and iPad supports family sharing, so it depends if you're using this stuff.

I paid for Final Cut Pro once about I don't know, twenty years ago, and I still use it, which is just wild, pretty amazing.

Anyway.

Check it out Apple Creator Pro for students only three dollars a month.

There's a new app in China called Are You Dead, and it is topping the charts there.

It's very simple.

Every day you check in by tapping a button on your phone to prove that you're alive.

If you don't check in for a couple days in a row, the Apple automatically tell your emergency contacts you might be in trouble.

It's for young people living alone, it's for elderly people living alone.

And I know it's got a scary name, but the creator told the Financial Times the name are You Dead is not intended to be bad.

It serves as a reminder for us to cherish the present.

Okay, I like that.

Let's open up the feedback.

Denise says, I had to write you after trying the Zoe app because it's amazing.

I started scanning items in my pantry.

The results were eye opening.

A mini non scored thirty.

That one's out.

Magic spoon protein granola scored a ninety.

That's a keeper.

I've checked several other items.

I love how easy it is snap a picture.

I'm heading to Sprouts now, can't wait to scan more products.

You might actually get credit for kicking off my weight loss journey.

Thanks so much.

Have a great weekend.

Thanks Denise.

Raoul Rights.

Hey, Rich, I want to warn people about a scam my wife went through.

She got a call that it looked like it was from the Sheriff's station.

They told her there was a warrant for her arrest because she never responded to a letter and she had to come to the station alone.

Before that, they told her to go to the bank withdraw five hundred dollars, then go to Walgreens and make a payment for a citation, or she would go to jail.

The scams sounded very real.

They had all her personal information, even details about her parents.

We only realized a scam.

It was a scam.

When the call dropped, she called the sheriff station directly.

They confirmed it was fake.

They said, scammers spoof the phone number so it looks like police are calling, and this has happened before.

Unfortunately, that money was our rent.

I just want to make sure others don't fall for this, Ugh Raoul.

Sorry to hear that, but I'm glad it didn't go further than that.

Gary in Denver says, I depend on Alexa because of my disability.

I was nervous about upgrading to Alexa Plus, but I did it.

Here's what I've noticed.

Alexa Plus struggles with location searches.

The good news is my smart routines mostly work runs my hue Ys switchbought Zigbie and Nest devices does well with general questions like sports scores, Bible quotes, geography, and US history.

The biggest surprise was shopping.

I tried to order yellow polenta, which was out of stock, and Alexa Plus added nine packages of a different polenta to my cart without asking.

I had to remove it manually.

You would have been eating a lot of polenta.

Christine in Los Angeles, I want to say thank you.

I listened to your weekend show every week.

Even when I don't fully understand every technical detail, you still make learning feel approachable and even fun.

That really stands out.

It makes sense why you're successful and popular.

Who said I was successful and popular?

Despite your busy schedule, you always take the time to respond thoughtfully to your listeners, and that means a lot.

I'm thrilled your show as national.

We're lucky to have you in here in LA, but it's great that people all over the country can benefit.

I hope you'll share this feedback at the end of one of your upcoming shows.

Well, I just did Christine gold Star for you today, Don writes Rich, Welcome to twenty twenty six.

Things are changing faster than ever, especially for people over fifty who have never worked with technology.

Even with my background, I still need help.

Many of my friends are overwhelmed by TVs, appliances, cars, spam scams, and they don't even know how much their tech needs are.

Your newsletter hit on a really important opportunity helping older adults keep their world working.

There's a real need for trustworthy people who can patiently explain tech and state and help people stay independant, keep doing what you're doing.

We really need it.

This is along the same lines mister Langdon says, I love your showing your newsletters.

I especially appreciate when you feature products that help people with disabilities.

Technology could be a double edged sword, but for me, it provides real independence, and I don't think people without disabilities always realize how much that matters.

I'm grateful for it and always look forward to the gadgets you talk about.

Happy New Year.

I do think about this and we do try to talk about it, and I think that technology is doing amazing things and I think it will continue to do more.

Thank you.

Danielle in Southern California says rich.

My daughter works for a small business in southern California and got a text that looked like it came from the owner.

I told her not to respond and check with the boss.

Turned out it was fake.

What's concerning is that several other coworkers got the same type of text, all addressed by first name.

No one can figure out how their cell numbers leaked.

Be careful.

Boss scams are ram Rampant, Bruce, and San Diego.

I'm a maintenance sky with fuel Rod.

I've been listening since day one.

I know you've got a favorite rechargeable battery.

I'm not trying to change your mind.

I just want to mention that we've got some new stuff in our fuel rod kiosks.

We're in about fifty airports, places like SeaWorld, San Diego, Zoo, Disney, and Moore.

I love listening every week, Bruce.

I've seen the fuel rods, but I usually carry my own battery, so I don't need one.

But it's a great thing.

I see these things everywhere.

They're all over.

Should never have a dead battery.

Gary says, hey, Rich, I just noticed your newsletter landed in my junk folder for the first time ever.

I attached the screenshot so you can see what I'm talking about.

I believe you.

Gary, just wanted to give you a heads up.

Thanks for all you do.

Uh oh, I think Gmail decided my app is my newsletter's not as good anymore.

I gotta up the ante.

If you haven't subscribed Rich on tech dot tv, let's see Oh my gosh, so many this week.

Michael says, I love your reports, especially the yearly ces remotes from Vegas.

I'd love you to see your revisit some of the things you showed us years ago that felt almost impossible, but today we take for granted.

Oh, robots, AI, instant language translation, voice to text.

Yes, all that stuff is amazing and it's gotten so good.

David says.

I just read and watched your cspiece about smart rings, really enjoyed it.

After seeing one of your segments years ago, I opened an account with Oh gosh, I can't remember how to say this Quantic Bank, and had been wearing their pay ring ever since this was a ring that you could tap to pay.

I barely leave home without it.

About six months ago, Quantics started recruiting real estate agents to become mortgage loan officers.

When I spotted their logo in an ad, I jumped in.

After lots of training and background checks, I can now do mortgage loans in all fifty states.

When people ask about the bank or notice the ring, I tell them I first heard about Quantic from your show.

Thank you so much, David.

That's cool you're saying I got you a job in some interesting way here, Tony.

I've been trying to trying out a few AI features, and I really like when Google uses AI to summarize search results.

I also just learned how to use AI mode on Google Search to identify photos.

You tap AI mode, take a picture, hit done, and it figures out what you're looking at.

I've used it to identify European churches, parks from random photos, even buildings from brochures.

It's been great figuring out from a random photo of what it actually shows.

Love it, Yes, Tony, I was in Costco last night and I used this.

I took a picture of a wine bottle to get the ratings and reviews, and it was like, oh, this wine sells for about thirty dollars in Costco, but one hundred dollars online.

What So I bought a bottle and I'm very curious to try it because if that's true, I don't know how that's true, but pro tip, do I have the name of it?

Shoot?

I don't know if I could tell you the name, because I don't even know what it is.

I think it was called Committee Committee Wine.

Maybe that was it.

Yeah, Oh yeah, voltaor vultou R Cabernet.

For some reason, it sells like thirty dollars.

I don't know.

I don't know if that's true, but anyway, we'll see.

AI could have been wrong on that, but I'll just tell my friends I got a really good bottle.

Let's see.

Oh, Ham Radio I mentioned, Gordon says during the show you asked about the meaning of seven to three that appeared in a listener's email signature.

It's a long standing Ham Radio term that means best regards.

I sent you a link explaining its history and usage, seventy three.

So is this seventy three or seven three?

It's not six to seven.

I know that, PJ.

You mentioned seventy three on the show.

Here's a deeper backstory and Ham Radio seventy three is a friendly sign off that means best regards.

It's so common that Ham's often using an emails and even on social media.

The reason it's a number is it goes all the way back to landline telephones in the eighteen hundreds, when operators use numbers as shorthand for common phrases to save them time and eighteen fifty seven telegraph guide seven to three originally meant my love to you, which later evolved into the warmer professional sign off Hams used today.

PJ.

Thanks for that history lesson.

Uh, Shannon, I just want to say you outdid yourself with the CEES videos in your newsletter.

I shared the links with at least ten friends who didn't know about you.

I especially love the Michael Jackson dancing robot, and the robot has served you a cup of coffee.

So cool.

I can't wait for these kinds of devices to actually be available to the public.

Thanks for being so good at what you do.

Thank you, Shannon, and I will leave it there.

That's gonna do it for this episode.

You can find links to what I mentioned on the website rich on Tech dot TV.

Find me on social media.

I am at rich on Tech.

Next week we'll have the Computer Exorcist on.

Thanks so much for listening.

There are so many ways you can spend your time.

I really appreciate you spending it right here with me.

Please don't drive distracted.

Those texts can wait.

Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible.

My name is rich Demiro.

I'll talk to you real soon.

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