OnePlus exits the U.S., teen AI alerts & streaming settlement cash (183, July 18, 2026)

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and iHeart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out. Shout out to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashawn Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. You're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bulls**t. 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From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. meta will alert parents if their teen says something concerning during an ai chat a ransomware attack has shut down production of milk and protein shakes if you've paid for youtube tv or direct tv stream you may qualify for cash from a 50 million dollar settlement plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich DeMuro 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. All right, let's open up those phone lines. 888-RICH-101. 888-742-4101. Give me a call if you have a question about technology, email is also open. Just go to richontech.tv and hit contact. That's richontech.tv and hit contact. All right, coming up this week, we've got guests including show sort of semi-regular travel expert, Johnny Jett. He just got back from Europe, or maybe he's still there. He's going to tell us about some of the things you should download before a trip. And later, we've got Tobin Richardson, CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, going to talk about how AI is transforming the smart home. Well, I hope you're having a fantastic week back in the studio this week after a short trip. It was fun. I love when trips go smooth. When everything works out and everything goes as planned, that is the best. And it just reassures you that, you know, when you travel, you are leaning on a network of people, all kinds of people that you see and you don't see. Like the pilot is just one part of that situation. There are so many people that help get us around this world. And you're really just leaning into them when you travel. And sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you may be delayed, may not be the best experience. But when everything goes smooth, you really have to smile and just enjoy the fact that, you know, things most of the time just kind of go smooth with that. This week, we got some really sad news in the tech world. I am sad to say that OnePlus is exiting the US market and the European market after more than a decade. Now, if this is the first time you're hearing about OnePlus, well, that was part of the problem. Even though I've covered this company for years, This is the end of an era for Android fans. OnePlus is still going to exist as a company, but U.S., Canada, Europe, no longer part of their plan after a global restructuring. Now, if you have a OnePlus phone, you don't have to panic. The company says it's going to continue to honor their warranties, provide repairs, software and security for existing devices as long as they promised those updates. Now, the big change is that their operating system, Oxygen OS, is going away. So if you have one of these phones, you're going to be offered an upgrade to Oppo's Color OS 17. This is optional. You will be able to roll back if you prefer the Oxygen OS operating system. I know this is getting into the weeds here, but basically if you have one of these phones, you're going to have a little fork in the road. It's going to say, hey, do you want Oppo's Color OS 17? And you can say yes or no. If you like Oxygen OS, just continue using it. If you want to use the other one, go ahead. Yes, this is part of a bigger company out of China, and Oppo still continues to operate around the world, not here in the U.S., but that's basically what's happening here, is they're going to continue with OnePlus just not here. This is also going to affect their online community. So if you post there, that's shutting down on August 16th. You know, that was a big part of OnePlus was the community, right? They had this large following online. People would comment very vocally about things they liked and did not like about OnePlus phones, and that would all be on the community boards. That's going away. They're going to focus on India and China moving forward. India, they love these OnePlus phones. OnePlus typically has very appealing price tags in India, China, their hometown or their home country, so they're going to continue there. So what made OnePlus go out of the U.S.? Well, I will tell you my thoughts, but the problem is the sales for this company never really got to a place where they needed to be. Component costs we know are up across the board, and OnePlus has really struggled to stand out among the other manufacturers here in the U.S., including Apple, Samsung, Google, and to a lesser extent, we still have Motorola and nothing as our options. But this is one less option in a sea of Android phones that, you know, these were really the Android phones that the enthusiasts love. Why did they love them? Because they had really good specs, really good software that was clean, not a lot of bloat, and the price tag was pretty good. Now, OnePlus started in 2013 as, quote, unquote, a flagship killer. So this was kind of the, that was their mantra. We'll never settle, flagship killer. Those were the two mantras. And this idea of a flagship killer was we give you a lot for the money. And the first phone that came out, $299, invite only. So it got a lot of hype. This was around 2014. And I'll never forget, I was in a lift, the back of a lift in San Francisco. I was getting picked up from the airport. And I cover phones, so I knew every single phone in the world. And I saw this phone there, and I'm like, what phone is that? Because I've never seen it before. It was just all screen. It was so beautiful. Sandstone back. And the driver was like, oh, that's called a OnePlus. I was like, what? Immediately, I had to search out this phone and I've been covering them ever since. But here's the thing. Over the years, OnePlus just had issues making inroads in the US market because we know it is dominated by Apple. We know it is dominated by Samsung. And to a very lesser extent, the Pixel, every time I covered a OnePlus, I'd say to myself, well, why wouldn't I just get a Pixel? The camera is way better. Now, the specs were not as good, that's for sure. The specs on the OnePlus phones were always so good. But here's the thing. I loved covering OnePlus because they would always surprise us with something really unique and different and fun. And they always had like one sort of gimmick, one new gimmick on every phone. Over the years, I can remember this. I looked up some research to see kind of like over the years what OnePlus did. I'll never forget the second phone that came out, which was the one I wanted. They didn't have NFC on it at a time when everyone was doing tap to pay. It was just kind of starting. And so, of course, everyone was like, well, what are you doing? OnePlus. Then the next phone that came out with the OnePlus 3, they had the NFC. Then they came up with super fast charging. And they also had more RAM, you know, as opposed to all the other phones out there. Then you had the OnePlus 5, which had this jelly scrolling controversy, which when you scrolled up, it kind of looked a little odd, and they gave some excuse for why that happened. Let's see. Then you had the OnePlus 6, which everyone was doing wireless charging at the time, but OnePlus didn't do wireless charging, or I should say everyone in the Android world, even though it had a glass back, so everyone was upset about that. Then the OnePlus 6T, they removed the headphone jack. That upset people. Then the OnePlus 7 had really good refresh rate. It had this weird pop-up selfie camera that was really interesting and didn't last any other phone after that. And the cameras just weren't that good. Then you had the OnePlus 8 Pro. I remember waking up and reading a story about how the OnePlus 8 Pro could take x-ray pictures. And I pulled the phone out of the drawer, did all this, you know, actually I didn't do the software updates. And yeah, they had this weird mode on it that you could take like a picture and somehow you could see through certain things like a remote control, anything that was plastic, you could like see through it. So they immediately did a software update and like got rid of that functionality. That was weird. Then the OnePlus 9, they had this Hasselblad partnership. They said, oh, the phone, the cameras are going to get so much better. Well, guess what? They didn't get much better. And so people were disappointed once again. Then you had the 10 plus, uh, the OnePlus 10T. They removed this slider that they had on it that everyone loved. It was this little slider up and down to like make it go vibrate or ring. They removed that. People got upset once again. OnePlus 11, the slider returned. Battery was great. Good value once again. Then you had a foldable phone. They tried their hand at a foldable. In 2023, I went to New York City for the launch of the foldable phone, the OnePlus Open. People love this phone because it was great specs. It was a big screen. It was thin. It was light. The multitasking was excellent. People loved the foldable phone, but guess what? It was too expensive. It was more expensive than we imagined it to be. Let's see. Then you get the OnePlus 13, which kind of had a lot of things going for it. had a great battery, great battery technology, IP69 technology, which is extremely durable. But again, the cameras were good. People did like the cameras on this. I didn't think that they were the best cameras, but finally, they skipped the 14, then we got the 15, and that was the last model of OnePlus. And OnePlus 15 took a step back in the cameras. So again, it's like this company, as much as I love them, we're just all over the place with their launches all over the place. And that's, I think, part of the problem. You had great software, you had great hardware, no bloat, but the cameras were always hit or miss. And to boot, they didn't really have the carrier support they needed. You couldn't really walk into a store and buy this phone on a payment plan, which is how 99% of Americans like to buy their smartphones for better or for worse. So rest in peace, OnePlus. Sad to see you go. You did bring some excitement to the Android world and the smartphone world in general. Let's just hope that because we have one less player in the smartphone options here in the U.S., Samsung, Google, Apple don't kind of rest on their laurels and they still continue to innovate and do some cool stuff. All right, coming up, I'm going to tell you about that milk cyber attack. What? Who's attacking milk plants. I guess they are. Plus, we've got yet another scam story. Prominent person scammed once again out of money. Your calls, 888-RICH-101 plus the website richontech.tv. My name is Rich D'Amiro. Back after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich D'Amiro here hanging out with you, Talking Technology, 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. 888-RICH-101. Welcome to the show. Rich on Tech.TV is the website. I will admit, I did something very stupid last night. Very, very stupid. And I got my wife to do it, too. My kid did not partake, and that is eating lettuce. We got a salad last night after much debate. and I asked the restaurant, and I said, hey, have you heard anything about your lettuce? Is it okay? And he's like, not really. He's like, but I've been eating it all week, so if I get sick, we all get sick. I'm like, okay, that's not very reassuring. So I posted a picture of this salad on my Facebook page, facebook.com slash rich on tech, and about 65% say, no, it is not worth the risk to eat this salad. About 25% say, yes, they eat it. And about 10% said it depends where the lettuce came from. Uh, most people are taking a timeout from lettuce. Taco Bell obviously became, I mean, how easy is it that Taco Bell is part of this equation when you have explosive diarrhea in the mix? I mean, come on. This is like, these jokes are just too easy. I have not, I have not watched the late night shows, but I'm guessing they are having a field day with this right now. Um, the old school crowd, apparently not worried. A lot of people referenced drinking water from the garden hose, the three-second rule, sharing utensils, and taking their Flintstone vitamins as a kid. Yeah. So anyway, very, very interesting topic right now. So stay safe out there. Be careful. And it seems like what I'm seeing is it seems like everything from these main companies, they've kind of resolved or at least they're telling you on their websites what the latest is. So just be aware of what you're doing. Look at the CDC website. I think that's really what's guiding me at this point. So let's go to, it sounds like me in New Jersey. Richard in New Jersey, welcome to the show. From one rich to another, how are you doing? I'm doing well. What's going on? Good. Okay, real quick, I'll give you the scenario I have. It has to do with Roku. I have my LG OLED TV with the 4K Roku, and it's hooked up through my Sonos Arc. Works perfectly. Now, I have two other 4K TVs, both Samsung, but I only have the standard Roku, and I cannot get my sound bars to work, one of them being a Sonos Beam, the other being a Samsung 5.1, which I think would hook up. You know, I go into the settings and hook up, you know, external speakers. Nothing comes out. I can't get them to work. Do you think I need the 4K Roku, or am I missing something else? No, I don't think you need the 4K Roku. What I think is happening here is the sound output from your Roku, you need to change the sound output or change the sound input settings from the Sonos or the sound bar in general. So I've got the same situation with I've got a Roku and I've got a sound bar. And basically the main thing that you notice here is that depending on the output, it may not read that output. So there's like a digital output. There's like a PCM. There's a whole bunch of different choices. So go into your Roku settings. And now here's the other thing. If your Roku is connected through your TV, it may be your TV audio output settings that you have to change. But basically, take a look at the audio output settings on the Roku, on the TV. And I don't believe you have to change them on the soundbar as much, but you can look in the Sonos app and see if there's anything there. But it's something to do with the way it is sending audio out that is just not registering on the other system. So that is what I've experienced is it all comes down to the audio output that you are feeding. So just go through those audio settings, try the different outputs, and see which one finally gets this thing to give out some audio. You don't need a 4K Roku to display on a 4K TV or use a soundbar. I mean, sound is very basic, and so it's definitely just a matter of the settings on there. So hope all is well in New Jersey. Thanks for the call today, Richard. Do appreciate it. But iOS 27 public beta is here. So if you have a compatible iPhone and you want to try Apple's next big update before the fall release, you can. But keep in mind, this is beta software. So Apple does recommend installing it on a secondary device because there could be bugs. There could be battery drain. Your apps may not be compatible, especially banking apps. There could be some glitches. Back up your phone before installing for sure. It is free. You go to Apple's beta software program. Oh my gosh, it's free to become a free tester of software. Like basically you're helping Apple out. The big story this year is the Siri AI that I've been talking about. Yes, it is on there. Yes, you can sign up for it. Keep in mind, you need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. You also get to try out all the new features like the visual intelligence and the camera app. You could share your location for a set period of time. Calendar and reminders. Everything's just much smarter. You can do everything with natural language. There's expanded child safety features and new parental tools. Early reviewers, including myself, kind of agree that this is one of Apple's most stable betas in years. So it does work pretty well. Like I said, I've had it on my phone, my primary phone, for a while. I do not recommend you do that. But if you do, it'll probably be fine. But if you are not like a tech expert or enthusiast or you want your phone to work perfectly, do not do this. the other thing is you might notice that your phone feels faster everything does feel faster on the device that I'm using because they kind of improve the responsiveness the animations the app launches but again this is beta software so it's not going to be perfect and my advice is to wait until September unless you have a secondary device or you are very adventurous let's put it that way. The other thing to know is that you should back up your phone before you do this. And if you want to go back, like if you hate this, you will have to wipe your phone and then reinstall the software from scratch. So it is not a simple process to say, oh, I don't like this. I want to go back. You do have to kind of wipe your phone and go from the backup to your phone again. So iOS 27 public beta is here. Proceed with caution. Rich on tech dot TV episode one, 183. So rich on tech dot TV slash 183. We'll bring you to the show notes coming up. I'll tell you about this. Let's see the meta teen AI alerts coming up right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Phone lines are open. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Give me a call if you have a question or need some tech advice. Email is also an option. Just go to richontech.tv. Hit contact up at the top. You can also follow along with the show notes there. Let's go to Gary in Redondo Beach on a follow-up. Gary, what's up? Hey, Rich. I called you a couple weeks ago. I dropped my iPad and did crap. So you called me to go to the Apple store, so I made an appointment. I remember. I went to see them. I can't believe how busy these Apple stores are. Oh, isn't it wild? There's so many people in there. The whole mall is empty except for the Apple store. They're immense for $99. Okay, so I – sorry, I was talking over you. So tell me what happened. You went into the Apple store, and what did they say? The guy looked at it, and there was a little dent on the back, and he said, well, we can't really fix this, so we're just going to give you a new one. Oh, wow. And you had AppleCare. Yes, I had extended coverage. And how much did they charge you? $99. Okay. Do you think that was fair? Oh, more than fair. I have my new iPad, and it's great. Okay. Well, that was easy. It was, but thank you very much. All right. Great. Good deal. So tell me, how much is AppleCare? How much did you pay for it? I want to get an idea of how much this totally costs you, because you still have AppleCare even after this, right? I'm not sure. I think I'd pay. I don't know. I'd have to look it up. I'll send you an email. I'll let you know. Okay. Well, good. I'm glad it worked out. And, you know, Apple Store, thanks for the call today, Gary. I'm glad it worked out. The Apple Stores are truly incredible. Last week I told the story, my wife and I, and I told it in my newsletter today. We went to the Apple Store in Grand Central, and it's quite remarkable. Apple runs hundreds of these stores around the world. Each one is unique. Each one is really a great gathering place where people can hang out. And people sit there. They surf the web. They sit on the chairs. It's comfortable. They check out the accessories. There's people that can help you. It really is quite incredible what Apple has done with these stores. And like I was joking over Gary, I was saying the whole mall could be empty. Like literally it could be ghost town crickets. You go into the Apple store in the mall and it's just packed. Everyone's there. And I used to joke because there used to be some other stores from other companies, and they're just not the same. Like there was just never, like Microsoft shut down all of their stores. They only had a handful, but they shut down a bunch of them. And then Samsung has a couple of what they call Samsung Experience stores, but I think it would probably be good for Samsung to open up some more stores because I think that it would help. There's enough people that use Samsungs in the U.S. that need help with them that it would probably be a good thing if they opened up more stores for repairs and in-person everything. That's just a, you know, people like to do things in person still, believe me. Even with all this AI and all this stuff you can do online, having a human take a look at something like Gary did, and the guy goes, yeah, we can't fix this here. 99 bucks, you're done. We'll get you a new one. That's very nice. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. This week's show is sponsored by Incogni. Your personal information is valuable and far more accessible than you realize. Every time you shop online, your data is collected, packaged, and sold to data brokers. Yes, that is very true. This fuels secret shadow scores that companies use to judge if you're a VIP or a problem child, a problem customer to be ignored. That's why I use Incogni. It works quietly in the background to wipe your personal data from people search sites, data brokers, and hidden databases you probably don't even know exist. Incogni is busy. while I do this show, they're busy removing my name and info from hundreds of databases. And they don't stop there. They keep sending follow-up requests so your data stays removed, protecting you from spam, scams, and real digital threats. Remember, they can't scam you if they can't find you. Take your personal data back with Incogni. I-N-C-O-G-N-I is how it's spelled. Get 60% off their regular price when you use my name, Rich, at incogni.com slash rich. That's 60% off when you use my name, rich, at incogni.com slash rich. Once more, incogni.com slash rich. Email is also an option for the show. Email me at richontech.tv. Hit contact. That's what Judy did. Judy says, I have a Galaxy S25 and Chrome's listen to this page feature. I use it all the time. After uninstalling an update, I think uninstalling an update, the feature disappeared. I've tried reinstalling Chrome, but nothing has restored it. My new Galaxy tablet still has the feature, but it's too large to carry around the kitchen. Is there any way to bring it back to my phone? I checked on my Samsung and it is gone. And I don't know why Google plays these games on Chrome. Half the time you go there and Chrome's listen to this page is there. Half the time you go to Chrome and it's gone. I don't know why they keep doing this, but maybe it'll come back in another update. They update Chrome pretty reasonably often. Otherwise, until then, you can try Google's free reading mode app. So go into the Play Store, and it's called Reading Mode by Google. So make sure it says Google LLC underneath it. Don't just download some random reading mode app. The other thing is I love this app called 11 Reader. So if you type in 11reader.io, they've got a great app that you can download to iPhone and Android that will read you any article aloud and it's free and it's really good and so I use this in my car they do have paid plans to do things on but you can use the base features for free but again it's called 11reader.io also writing in on the website Rick listening on KFI AM 640 thank you Rick I'm a huge Dodgers fan and usually watch games on my Android phone through the app, but some games only air on regular TV through my antenna. I like watching while I exercise on my elliptical. Is there a device that can take over the air signal from my antenna and send it to Wi-Fi to my phone? Yes. There is a device called the Tableau, T-A-B-L-O, and it is usually, what is it, $100? Let's see how much it is. It is $120, let's see, oh, yeah, $100. So two tuner, $100. You connect it to your antenna. And once you do that, not only can you watch TV, but you can pause it. You can record all the broadcast channels and watch them on any of your devices. So this is a good thing to know about in general. It reminds me of kind of like the TiVo back in the day, but maybe this is just for over-the-air television. So again, it's called Tableau, T-A-B-L-O-T-V.com. And you pay for this once. As far as I know, there are no subscription fees. Let's see. Do they charge subscriptions anymore? I don't think so. No annual fees or subscriptions. So that's a nice thing too. So that's the easiest way to do it, I would say, is you sound like you already have an antenna. Sounds like you already have everything set up. So all you need to do is connect this Tableau and then you'd be able to connect the Tableau to your Wi-Fi and you can stream to your heart's content. All right, Rick, enjoy those games. All right. Let's see here. What should I tell you about? Oh, I was at the dentist this week. You know, AI gets a bad rap. I know, I know. It's like all these data centers. People don't want them in their backyard. AI, people are worried about jobs. I joked on Twitter or X this morning saying, you know, listen to the show before AI takes all of us over. I mean, it's a valid concern because AI is just so smart. My dad was asking me. This was really funny. I was in New Jersey. and my dad is like, hey, should I, or, and my mom, they're like, should I pay for ChatGBT? And I was like, no, I think you're okay. They're like, my dad's like, why not? It's so smart. I'm like, well, I mean, you can look at it that way. Like you're paying 20 bucks a month for like all the world's information, like the smartest thing you've ever interacted with in your life, besides your kids, you know, me. No, I'm just kidding. But they actually fought me on it. Like they wanted to pay for this service. I'm like, well, if you're not running into roadblocks where it's saying sign up for more or pay to get more access, then you don't really need to pay for it. But if you want to, yes, you get access to their higher end models, like the latest, greatest ChatGBT version. So no problem with that. But I pay gladly because I use it every day. Anyway, I'm telling you this because there's a lot of little things that AI can do. And at the dentist's office where I park, there's all these parking signs. And it's so confusing. I was like, you know what? Let me just take a picture of the parking sign, feed it to ChatGBT. And I said, can I park here right now? Sure enough, it went through the whole thing and it explained like a dissertation of when you can park there, how long you can park there. And bottom line, it was like, yes, bottom line is right now you are free to park here. If you want, you have two hours, unless you had a permit, then you'd be able to park there for longer or unless it's this day or this day when they have street cleaning, but it was great. So there's another use of AI for you. So 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Still got so much to talk about. I got to tell you about this cyber attack on Fairlife milk and protein shakes, meta-AI teen alerts, and we've just got so much more right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology, 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Such a good song Let go to Oregon here Stephen in Oregon Stephen what up Hi. I've got this Motorola phone. And on the bottom you have the screen on, it's got a triangle on the left side, a circle in the middle, and a square with lines on each side on the right. Yes. Okay, now I was looking at the internet this morning on Craigslist at motorcycles, and I wanted to eat breakfast. So what I do is I hit that square button to, you know, lock it in there, and I hit the lock, which pops up the little blue dot with a lock on it to lock it. So when I get done eating, I come back, I just hit the square button, and I don't have to go all the way through Craigslist and, you know, type in what I want. But lately it's been just when I shut it off and I turn it back on, it comes up Google. It doesn't show Craigslist. I have to go back into my history of what I searched and punch it in that way. Is there any way I can just make it so it doesn't do that anymore? Because it used to not do that. I come back, I hit that square button, you're not at the end of the day or whatever. Yeah, and it's in there. So you can leave open a tab. I mean, if you're talking about Chrome, if you leave open a tab at the bottom, you should be able to scroll through your tabs and see them there. The only thing is maybe you're closing your tabs by accident or they're closing out. The only other thing I can think of is maybe your phone. What type of phone is this? It says Moto G on the box. Okay. The only other thing I can think of is maybe because you're running a bunch of apps, there might not be enough memory and the apps are closing out in the background. and so maybe when that app closes out, it's closing out all your open tabs. So that could be another thing. The other thing is, like, right now, like, if you look at inactive tabs, I've got mine set to, like, 21 days. But in general, if you want to keep a page, what about just bookmarking it? I'm not sure what that is. I'm very computer illiterate. Okay. All right, well, there's a couple things you could do. So first off, instead of tapping that little square box, you can tap the three little lines, and you can just add a bookmark. So it says bookmarks. So up at the top, you'll see there's a little star. You can star that page, and that will always be available to you. Instead of looking through all your history, you can just go right to your bookmarks, and that page would be there. So that's probably the easiest way to do it. The other thing you can do is there's another option where it says, well, this one says, Let me just get to a regular website. Okay. So if you tap those three little lines again, there's something that says install and create shortcut. So you can create a shortcut that opens up in Chrome. But that one's a little too complicated. I wouldn't do that one. I would just choose it as a bookmark. I don't know why your page is going away. It really shouldn't be doing that because I'm looking at mine, and I can scroll through all my old tabs for the past week or so on my phone. So the only thing I can think of is that that app might be closing down, and that's why it is getting rid of those. The other thing you could do, and I'm not sure if the Motorola software lets you do this, but there is a way where you can make sure an app does not close out in the background. So if you kind of pull, I guess you've got to get to your list of open apps, however you do that on your phone, because if you swipe up from the bottom and just pause a little bit, you should see a whole bunch of apps that you can swipe through. And then if you tap the icon of the app up at the top, it's kind of floating. It'll give you options like app info. And there's one called keep open. If you tap that, it basically means it will not close out that app when you close out all your other apps. So it's a nice way of keeping apps open that you don't want to go away in the background. But it's tough to tell what's going on there. But I think my best advice, Stephen, is to just make bookmarks of these pages that you want, and you can just refer to them later. That's probably the easiest way to do it, especially if you're on Craigslist and you're finding different things that you want to get rid of later on if they sell out or whatever, or if the listing is done, you can just get rid of those bookmarks. Thanks for the call, 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Apple raising prices again. We just talked about how they raise prices on their devices. Now they're raising software prices. So Apple Music going up by $1. Now they're up to $12 a month for an individual plan. For a long time, music plans were kind of stalled at $9.99 a month, and now the new price is basically $11.99, $12 a month. Apple One is changing their, let's see. So Apple One is kind of a bundle of different things. So you get, let me see what's included. I pay for it every month and I can't believe I'm paying $2 more now. But Apple One includes different things like iCloud, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Fitness Plus, Apple Arcade. Individual is $19.95 a month, which it looks like I think that stayed the same. Family plan now $27.95 a month. That's up $2. Premiere, which I pay for, is now $40 a month. That is just, it's just wild. When I started paying for this, I think it was pretty sure it was $29.95 a month. So you're talking a full $10 more now. And at that point, at $30 a month, it seemed like a bargain. Now at $40, I'm like, okay. But the problem is when you start parsing these things out, like you get a bunch of iCloud, which all my kids and wife need for their storage. You get Apple TV. You get Apple Music. You get Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness, Apple News Plus. I mean, you do get a lot for the value, but now it's just getting much more expensive. They tell you the value is $73 for what you're getting for $40. So it's still a pretty good value. But do you need all that stuff? Like I don't use, the last time I used Apple Fitness has been a while. 888-rich101, 888-742-4101. Ransomware attack has shut down Fairlife production. If you're not familiar with Fairlife, it's my kid's favorite milk. It's made by Coca-Cola. Hackers accessed some of Fairlife's computer systems, including their production systems. So they had to temporarily stop production of their filtered milk, their core power protein shakes, and their nutrition plan shakes. So now we are seeing cyber attacks affect milk production. Canada, everything's still good over there, except for the wildfires. So we're thinking of you for that stuff. Fairlife is a big Coca-Cola brand, which maybe you didn't know. They have not identified if the hacker said whether any data was stolen. Obviously, they are investigating this. Stores can continue selling their existing inventory, but if this shutdown goes on for a long time, there could be shortages. But right now, everything that is on store shelves from Fairlife is safe. It is unclear when U.S. production will restart. But this is wild. I mean, we're seeing, you know, in the past, it was all about viruses, right? Like, that's what you were worried about on your computer. Nowadays, it's all about cybersecurity, ransomware, and phishing attacks. These are the things that we're up against more. So the bottom line is you need to backup your computer. Have a backup of important information on your computer, on your phone. I know a lot of this stuff is automatic, but please have a backup of important stuff. A lot of these companies, the way they get around these ransomware attacks is if they have a full backup of their system, they can just say to the hackers, hey, thank you, but get away. We're actually just going to reinstall our backup and we're good. So that's how you could survive these things too, if that ever happened to you. So please, please, please, backup, backup, backup. If you take one thing away from this show today, it is backup your stuff. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Back after this. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalenka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually bullshit. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic like... What's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP-1s? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep? So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor... Or the economist... Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology, 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Yes, if you want to talk to me, you actually have to dial a number on that device in your pocket. I know. What a concept. I can't remember the last time I dialed a number. Actually, that's not true. I dialed a number last night to order pizza. Why do I order pizza manually? Why don't you just use DoorDash, Rich? Why don't you use Uber Eats? because guess what? I'm not paying like $10 extra for my pizza to have someone deliver it. I will drive over, gladly pick it up. It's my little routine and I've gotten quite used to it. And yes, it saves me money. Even though they still ask for that little tip, you know, and they do the swing around to the screen. Oh, just one more question for you, sir. Here. And then they turn away. They like, it's like a, they turn the screen towards you. Then they look away for a moment. It's like, okay, give you my privacy in case I select zero on this thing, which sometimes I will, but most of the time I'll give him a tip. The guy's really nice. Let's see. What else here? Welcome to the show, website, richontech.tv. If you're not following me on Instagram, at richontech is my username, at richontech on Instagram. Just search it up. Follow me there. You'll be able to keep up with me throughout the week and all my shenanigans, mostly posting stories, but I'll post the regular things as well. By the way, it happened to me again. So two things before we get to calls. Was that Bon Jovi, the concert last weekend? I told you all about that. How was he? That's what some people wanted to know. I thought he was very good. Thought he put on a good show. Think his voice definitely had some issues because of the whole surgery. He had like vocal cord surgery. But I think overall, it was great. It was really fun. Packed the stadium arena, I guess you'd call it, MSG. It was great. Even my wife, who's not like a big Bon Jovi fan previously. She really enjoyed the concert. And it happened to me again, by the way. I flew back and I did not have Starlink on my flight. I had regular Wi-Fi, which was horrendous. And I got an automatic refund from the airline. They must know that their internet is so bad that they just automatically refund you the eight bucks that it costs to purchase it, which is great because I used it and I was like pulling my hair out trying to reply to your emails. and then I get the angry emails from you saying, Rich, how come you haven't replied to my email? Well, I was off for like, you know, four days. I try. I do try. But I can't get to every one of them. All right, let's go to Gilbert, line two, Gilbert and Glendale. Gigi, what's up? Hey, Rich. I have a Samsung Galaxy S22. So I used to use Samsung messaging, and then I guess they're discontinued as of this month, so we switched over to Google messaging. Everything's fine except for some of my contacts. When I send them a text message, when they reply to me, it comes in in a different... In a what? I have two threads for the same contact, basically. Okay, you have two threads for the same contact. It sounds to me like this has something to do with RCS. So, a couple things you could do to try to fix this. So, number one, it's only for certain contacts? Okay. Okay, so I would try deleting. Have you tried deleting the thread between those contacts? Like if you have like a back and forth of them, have you tried deleting both threads and starting over? I haven't tried that mainly because there's a lot of stuff stored in those threads that I use for information purposes. Like I don't want to. Right. I've contacted tech support like Samsung and T-Mobile, and they told me like delete the Samsung app or not the Google messaging and download it. But I told them if that's going to delete all my threads, they said maybe. That's why I haven't done it yet. Okay. I mean, yes, there is a possibility. So first thing I would do before you do anything, if you're concerned, because, like, I don't care about my messages, but, like, I know some people do. But I would download an app called SMS Backup and Restore. It's free. And you can basically make a backup of your text messages. So that way, at least, if anything, you know, if you mess around here, you at least can get them back. So SMS backup and restore by a company called SyncTech, S-Y-N-C-T-E-C-H. It is free. So that's number one, make a backup. Then what I would do is just try on one of these double messages to delete the thread and then text that person again and see if it still happens. Maybe a thread that you don't really care about as much. Right, right. No, that makes sense. Okay. The other thing I would do is you can go into your settings on the Google Messages app. Okay. Are you able to uninstall the old Messages app or no? Samsung Messages? Yeah. I haven't tried. Okay. I'm not sure I could. So you can try doing that, and that may fix things. But I think this has something to do with RCS. But I would go in, and you can go and tap the little I. Like, if you press and hold the Messages app, and then there's a little I that pops up, that brings you to the kind of behind the scenes of the app. And there's something called storage. And you don't want to delete the data. because if you delete the data inside there, you're going to delete all your messages. But if you delete the cache, C-A-C-H-E, that will just delete all the kind of operational stuff, and it will force a resync, and I think that that could help as well. So that's another thing you could try. I actually tried that before when I called tech support that had me do that. And it didn't work? No. Okay. The other thing I would do is you can toggle the – it sounds – to me it sounds like it's something either – are these iPhone users or Android users? I wouldn't know, honestly. Okay. So I think it's something to do with either the iPhone or, like, it seems like it's like an RCS thing if I had to guess. Am I able to shut up that RCS for certain contacts? Is that possible? To turn it off? Or, like, for those contacts? I don't know if you can turn it off for certain contacts. I think it just kind of automatically, if they have RCS, it's going to default to RCS. Let me see if you can turn it off. Let's see. Settings. Details. Yeah, you can do that, actually. So you can try that. So if you go in, you will see if you go into one of these threads, upper right-hand corner, there's three dots. It says details, and then it says only send SMS and MMS messages. And so you can try doing that for some of these contacts. The other thing you could do is just try toggling the, go into your settings of the app, and just try toggling the RCS on and off. So there it says RCS chats. Turn that off, restart your phone, and then turn it back on, and then you can try to see if that helps either. So, I mean, there's a lot of different ways of, you know, messaging should be pretty straightforward. Sometimes it's just not based on the different protocols, And sometimes I think it really comes down to sometimes these threads just kind of go off the rails. And then it's really tough to get them back on the rails without changing some sort of setting. But good luck, Gilbert. I know you're not the only person that has been switching over to Google Messages. Samsung Messages got rid of or they're discontinuing their messaging app in favor of Google Messages. You probably already know this if you're on an Android for Samsung. But there is a website that gives a whole bunch of information about this. So I will link that up on the show notes, richontech.tv slash 183. So richontech.tv slash 183. That will bring you to the information. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Take another call after this. But first, Meta AI is now going to alert parents if a teen seems to be in serious emotional distress. So what we're talking about here is if AI detects a sign that the teen may be at risk of suicide or self-harm, it will trigger an alert to the parent or guardian. Now, that's not going to be a perfect system, believe me. Number one, the teen has to be enrolled in Meta's supervised teen account. So the parent and teen have to be linked up together. I can probably tell you out of everyone in America, there's probably less than 10% of parents and teens that are linked up in this feature. I just can imagine that most people don't even know about this or don't have it turned on. So number one, if you have a teen using anything with Meta and you're a parent, you should probably look into this supervised teen accounts situation. Go into your settings. Your teen probably won't want you to do this, but you should probably work with them to be linked up just for safety reasons. So basically, if the AI detects signs of, you know, these issues, the AI will flip the conversation to a real human. So the human, a trained human reviewer is going to look at the AI kind of assessment and say, you know, okay, this teen sounds like they asked a weird question that we think is a little bit, you know, problematic. So should we alert the parent? And then the human can trigger the alert to the parent, and the parent will get a notification that their child may need help. They're also looking into contacting emergency responders. So as you can imagine, there's probably thousands. I know there are thousands of local jurisdictions for these emergency responders. Facebook is in the process or Meta is in the process of figuring out how to integrate all of them into their system and alert them when they have a serious safety concern. So again, this is new technology. Obviously, it's using a combination of AI and humans. It's not going to be a substitute for actually talking to your kids and noticing what's going on with them and understanding what they may be going through. So just keep that in mind. But we do know that more and more people, teens, kids, everyone is talking to AI about everything in their lives. And so if they are in a situation where they are in some emotional distress, they may ask AI without even thinking about it, about what they're going through. And so it's good that Meta is thinking about this and doing this. I don't think it's the end all for making sure that nothing ever bad happens. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. We'll take some more of your calls coming up. Plus, I'll tell you about the latest news anchor to be scammed out of his hard-earned money because of a, well, a phone call. Classic scam. I'll tell you about that. Coming up right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Let's go to Christopher in Los Angeles. Christopher, you're on with Rich. I'm Rich. How are you? I'm doing well. What's up? Yes, Rich. I'm having a couple of problems with my phone. have you heard of the app 2B? Yes, I know 2B Yes, every time I go to 2B I watch a TV show and I get tired of that show and I go to Highlight Radio to listen to some music and in the background the 2B is running what is causing that? and then after about a minute And TV goes off, and then the radio, I-I radio goes back on. Is this on an Android phone? Yes. Okay. It's a Samsung Galaxy A16. Okay, so what's happening here is Samsung's do not handle audio and video channels as well as the iPhone. On the iPhone, basically only one sort of stream can be playing at a time, and it handles that very well. on Android, lots of things can be going on at the same time. And that's a good thing for Android, but it's a bad thing for what you're talking about. So what's happening is that it's basically putting the Tubi app to sleep, and it's taking a little bit of time to do that. And in that time, you're hearing the cross-talk between the Tubi app, which the Android phone is going, oh, hold on, they just switched away from Tubi. Let's stop that stream. And then the iHeart app, which is bringing up, they're saying, oh, now they're bringing up iHeart. Let's start that stream. And so there's a little bit of crosstalk between those two while that process happens. But in general, is the Tubi app staying alive in the background, or does it always go away after a couple seconds? It goes away after a minute. Oh, it takes a minute. Okay. So in the future, if you want, you can force close out the app if you want that process to go faster, which means you can either stop the playback manually and then switch to the iHeart app. But if you just let the Tubi app play and then you go to iHeart, it's kind of taking a little bit of time to realize that you want to use iHeart and not the Tubi app. And so there's not like an easy switch. I think that some of this may have to do with your phone, the software on your phone, but I would make sure everything's up to date. But at the end of the day, if you don't want this to happen, you can either manually force. Do you know how to swipe out an app if you want to? Yes. Okay, so you can manually do that, or you can just stop whatever's playing on Tubi before you bring up iHeart. Can I ask you one more question, please? Maybe. We charge for the second one. Just kidding. With the Tubi app, I've been having problems with the Tubi app also because when I press Tubi, every once in a while, actually, every time I want to use Tubi. Tubi does not go on. I have to turn my phone off, restart my phone. Then I try a couple times, actually, to erase Tubi. Reinstall the app? Uninstall, yeah. Yeah, uninstall and reinstall. I uninstall Tubi app, then I reinstall it, and I do that a couple times. I'm really having trouble with Tubi. I had to turn my phone off a couple times. I had to reinstall and install the QBF. What's going on there? Well, I think, again, this comes down to your phone. You said you have a Samsung A16? 17. A17. Okay, so the Samsung A17, if you look at the specs on that phone, it's pretty basic. So it's just not going to have the, let me see, I'm looking at the specs here. let's see, design, okay, operating system, trying to see like what kind of, what this has. I mean, it's not too bad. Okay, it's got triple cameras. I'm trying to see like what kind of, it doesn't even show me like the actual specs. But I think what's happening is, I think your device is probably, it doesn't have the best specs. And so what that means is the RAM, the processor, it's just everything's taking a little bit longer for this phone to handle, especially when you talk about multitasking, switching to different things. So my advice is, number one, with Tubi specifically, if you are running any sort of like ad blocker or any VPN on your phone, you probably don't want to do that while you're using Tubi because Tubi relies on ads. And when apps rely on ads and they're free, they don't like that. And so everything's going to take longer to process. So if it's trying to like serve you those ads at the beginning of the app when it opens up and you have some sort of ad blocker or something that's blocking that, it doesn't like that. And so it will take longer to start up and you may feel like it's not working. So that's number one. The other thing I would do is I would go through and it sounds like you might need to update the software on this device. And there's various ways to update the software on a Samsung device. So number one, I would go into your settings and you can see where it says security and privacy. And it says updates under there. And you've got two updates to do. You've got a security update, and that will bring you to your operating system, and you can see if there is a new operating system update for Samsung. Mine's up to date, okay? Then you can back out, and there's a Google Play system update. And those are served separately. That's the sleeper update because a lot of people don't know about that update, but it can fix a lot of bugs on your phone. So check for the Google Play system update. Then you want to go into Google Play. So go into open up Google Play and go into where it says, go into your profile, and it will say manage apps and device. And then it says updates available. Make sure you update all of your apps there. And then finally, search for store, which this is the Galaxy Store. Samsung puts their own updates there as well. And so go into the Galaxy Store, tap menu. You'll see updates. I've got five of them. and now you can update all of the Samsung side of things, and that's the way to do it. So once you do all that, restart your phone, and you can see if you're still having issues with Tubi. But I think some of it comes down to what I would do personally, Christopher, is I would close out all the apps on your phone before you open up Tubi. That's going to give you the best viewing experience, less buffering, and faster speeds for everything you're trying to do. Thanks for the call today. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Back with Johnny Jett after this. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. Kim standing by patiently for your call. She'll get you in the queue to get you on the air and eventually talk to me. But first, we've got travel expert Johnny Jett on the line. Johnny, how are you doing? Good. How are you doing? Everything's good. You're in Canada. I know that there's been a lot of wildfires. What's the situation up there right now? Are you near those? Are you safe? I'm in Toronto. The fires are in northwest Ontario, which is the province of where Toronto is. So we're away from them, hundreds of miles away. But the smoke was so bad a couple days ago I mean people were wearing masks Our hotel I was at the Grand Park Hyatt and they were handing out masks to guests And I walked outside and you could just I mean I felt like I was back in L in January during the Malibu fires a year ago. Yeah, we're so used to this here. So we'll stay safe there. You just got back from Europe. Where did you go? I was in eight countries. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we flew Air Tahiti Nui from LAX to Paris, and then we were there for a few nights, and then we flew to Vienna, Austria, and jumped on a river cruise, Viva Cruises, they're a German company. We went to Slovakia, Budapest, Hungary. Then we flew to Rome to go on an ocean cruise. We went to Corfu, Greece. We went to Cotar, Montenegro. We went to Sicily, Naples. Then we flew to Finland, and now I'm in Canada. And is this all like, okay, and we're going to get to the apps that you, because you did a post, you know, I subscribed to the newsletter, JohnnyJet Newsletter, johnnyjet.com, and you talked about all these apps that you should install on your phone before you go to Europe. So was this all for work, or, you know, I mean, or is everything that you do, all your travel, is kind of a mix? I mean, whenever I travel, even if I'm getting paid to travel or someone sponsoring me, I mean, I'm always writing about it. Or if I'm on my own, even on our honeymoon, I mean, I wrote about it afterwards. I just can't disconnect when it comes to travel. I just want to share everything. I want to learn everything. And so, you know, I think I might have been inspired from one of your posts. You did something on apps like a year ago. And then I just started looking at my phone. I was like, what was I using this trip? Because one of my friends asked me, one of my readers asked me, because they're going to Italy. I said, well, I got plenty of apps to talk about. Okay. So let's talk about, I mean, obviously everyone knows Google Maps, but why do you like that? I mean, listen, Google is everything for everybody. But, I mean, I know a lot of people download the maps offline if they're not going to stay connected. I always stay connected. I use an eSIM, which we can talk about later. But, you know, having Google Maps, you can, you know, find out where you're going. You can keep the taxi drivers honest, you know, so they don't take you the long way. I mean, there's all kinds of tips with that. You always make sure with the taxi drivers you ask for the price in advance. If they say it's by the meter, then you make sure you know the route they're going so they're not taking it a long way. And also, there's a little trick a lot of them do. It's not just Italy. It's Turkey and stuff. But when you give them a bill, say it out loud. Say, here's a 50-year-old or whatever the monetary unit is there. Because sometimes you're tired and they'll say, you just gave me a 10. And you're like, well, I'm pretty sure I gave you a 50. Oh, wow. So I use my Meta glasses. I turn them on. When I hand the money, I have my Meta glasses on. Oh, my God. You're really – that is – okay. That is definitely next level. Okay, so you've got like the video evidence. And I do that when I negotiate too. I mean, you know, I rarely take a taxi that's not organized. But if I do, I will record. I'll say, hey, so how much is it going to cost? We were in Sicily last year. And we went to Taramina. And the guy's like, $300, 300 euros. And I'm like, you sure? And then when we get out, he's like, it was $320. I go, no. Let's go to the videotape. So this app called Walk Well Beyond, what is that? Yeah, I've had this one for years. I don't even know if they're still updating it, but it's a great app. What I love about Walk Well Beyond is that, you know, unlike Google Maps, it doesn't give you step-by-step directions. All it is is like a compass. It shows you which direction to go in. It tells you how far it is, how long it will take, your estimated time of arrival. And it's so simple, but I love it. If you're in a safe area and you just want to get lost, but you want to go in the right direction, it's perfect. I mean, I used it a lot this trip. Okay, that's a good one. I actually used it yesterday in downtown Toronto. I was trying to find Eataly from my hotel. And I was like, okay, just pointing me right in the direction. Yeah, I was just in Eataly in New York City. Great, great place. Okay, what's the difference between using Trainline and an official rail app? Well, listen, the Trainline is kind of like Google Flights, but for trains. So it just shows you everything that's out there. And just like Google Flights, you don't want to book your flight. You can't even book your flight on Google Flights. You have to go to whoever is running it. So like if you're booking an American Airlines flight, you go directly to American Airlines or United. You always want to book direct with airlines, hotels, and trains. That way, if you ever need to cancel, it's much easier to get your money back than going through a third party. And train line, they just tell you what your options are because there's multiple companies that usually go from one route to the other. I was in Linz, Austria a few weeks ago, and we were trying to get to Vienna Airport. And there's a train that goes right there, but there was multiple lines. We took the OBB, and then I went directly to OBB and booked it. Wow. Okay. I like that one. That's a good one. By the way, one app, speaking about those trains, one app I did not mention I need to add to this is ChatGPT. Because my train ticket, you know, I couldn't read it. It was in German. I mean, the Vienna airport. It doesn't say Vienna airport. It says the German word, which is, I'm not even going to try and pronounce it. And so I asked ChatGPT. I go, am I on the right platform? Where should I be? And I uploaded the picture of the ticket, and it told me exactly where I should be standing. Wow. The Floghofen Wien. Exactly. I don't know. That is definitely not how you say it. Well, that is how they pronounce it. That's how the Americans would say it. That's how it's spelled. Okay, let's see. So, yeah, tell me about the eSIM apps. You like Ubiggy? How do you say that? Yeah, I mean, listen, there's so many different eSIMs out there. Ubiggy, you know, they let me try it out a couple years ago, and I downloaded it, and I love it. I actually bought it again this morning or last night because my T-Mobile, I have T-Mobile, and I'm a candidate. It's supposed to work the same as it does in the U.S. But I was watching a Yankees game at dinner last night, and all of a sudden I got a notification saying, you just ran out of your five gigs. I go, what? And all of a sudden I could not even bring up the weather. So I was like, that's ridiculous. So I just went into the UBIGIUP, and I bought $5 worth of one gig for seven days, and I'm using it right now. There you go. No, I'm not on it right now. Now I'm on Wi-Fi. Okay. Well, I was going to say, it's got a good connection. And then, okay, so we have, let's see here. What is this Daytrip app? So Daytrip is a company. It's kind of like a car service, but instead of just a regular car service that takes you from point A to point B, they will take you on a sightseeing. They'll make stops so you can choose. So we were at the Port Civitecchia, which is right outside of Rome where all the cruise ships go, and we had to get down to Naples, which is a three-hour drive, which is crazy. so we were going to have him take us to Pompeii but we went the day before and then we were like you know what we could organize it to go into Rome to have lunch and then go into the city so you don't like Uber and stuff like that you're getting point A to point B but if you have all these all this luggage and when we arrived by the way from LA to Paris we arrived at 9 o'clock in the morning we booked a room through Wimstay it wasn't ready until 4pm So I arranged for day trip. Full disclosure, they actually sponsored us on that. But it's a great service. They met us at the airport. The driver took us wherever we want. The kids had never been to Paris. We drove by the Eiffel Tower. We went to Mass at Notre Dame. So are they like a tour guide as well? Are they saying, like, hey, check this out? Or are they just bringing you around? No, they're drivers that are knowledgeable. But no, it's not like a tour guide. Okay. Okay, that's a good one. But actually, the two drivers that I did have, they said they were tour guides. Maybe they do hire Deergrads. I'm not exactly sure on that, but they are knowledgeable, and they're very accommodating, and I love that. So if you have some extra money to spend and you don't want to just sit outside, or if you're in a hotel and you want to leave your bags there, it's really for when you're staying in an apartment because a lot of times they're not ready and there's no place to put your bags. That's why I mentioned Bounce, by the way. Yeah, I've used them before. It was great. It was fantastic. I used them in Seattle. It was just some random store. I think it was called the Purple Store. Everything in there is purple. And, yeah, you just leave your bag there. You get a QR code or whatever, and that's it. I left it there for the whole day for like $4. Yeah. They have it all around the world, and there's multiple companies that do this. But, you know, all these stores are trying to make more money. And so, hey, if they can grab travelers' bags and just store them for them safely, it's a win-win for everybody. All right, johnnyjet.com, all the apps you should download to your phone before your trip to Europe. JohnnyJet.com, all the apps you should download to your phone before your trip to Europe. That is the blog post that inspired what we just talked about. Thanks, Johnny Jet. Where are you off to next? You know what? I'm going to Chicago. Oh, okay. And then, no, we're exciting. I mean, Chicago's very exciting. It's a great city. Not as exciting as, you know, all the other places. But still, I love Chicago and the mix, the popcorn mix. Oh, yeah, the Garrett's popcorn? Yeah. Yeah, we're going to check out the Obama library, the new library. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Okay, well, tell us how that is. All right, thanks so much for calling in today. Appreciate it. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Rich on Tech.tv if you want to link to the blog post with all those apps. More Rich on Tech coming your way and your calls right after this. oh wow this song takes me right back to when i was i was like some sort of front end manager at office depot and i was a you know teenager i don't know what i was in high school and i remember i would go to different office depots and like help train the associates and so this was the song that was playing at the time i remember driving to like a home depot or office depot rather in uh like Long Island and they were opening up a new, this was back when like Office Depot was opening up these giant stores and I felt so cool. I was like, yeah, that's right. Like no math class for me. I'm going to train these people on how to be a front end. I think it was called a front end lead or something. Anyway, I love that job. Oh my gosh. This was back when Office Depot was a place where people bought their cell phones and also their business. They call it business machines. It was like all the business equipment, like computers. I mean, they had a ton of that stuff there. Now they still have it, but it's just not the same. It was more like a Best Buy back then in the center of the store. Anyway, that song brought me right back. But enough of that. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Let's go to Gene in Arkansas. Gene, what's up? All right, sir. I have an Apple laptop that when we power it up, it just stays the Apple logo and does nothing else. Uh-oh. How old is this thing? 2021. Okay. So it's not that old. That's pretty recent. So with Apple, it's kind of a little bit tricky when it comes to these startup modes because basically you have to get schooled in all these key commands. So the first thing you need to figure out is, is this an Intel Mac or does this have the Mac, like an Apple chip in it? 2021, I'm guessing it's Intel, right? Yes. Okay. So in that case, there's a whole bunch of guidelines for the key combinations. So the first thing is Command R. Have you heard of that? No. Okay. So that's going to basically get you into the Mac OS recovery mode. There's a safe, I mean, there's a whole bunch of different modes. So there's a safe mode. There is a startup manager, which, you know, if you're trying to use a different disk. But I think what's happening here, did anything happen to this computer? Did it drop? Did the hard drive fail? Like, did you hear anything weird before it stopped doing this? When was the last time it worked? My wife was using it. I'm not sure. It's been a couple of weeks. She didn't say anything happened. She just said she wanted to turn it on, and it wouldn't. Okay. Now, are you able, have you tried, like, pressing and holding the power button to turn it off and leaving it off for a little bit and then turning it back on? You've tried all that? Yes. Okay. And it still just comes up to the Apple logo and that's it? Correct. It won't go into safe mode. Okay. Can you get it into safe mode? No. Okay. Have you tried that? Yes. The shift. Have you tried the Command R? No, I have not. Okay. That's probably your next best bet because that is going to get you into the recovery mode, which lets you basically do some diagnostics on this thing, see what's happening here. Did you back up your stuff, or are you backed up on this computer? Yes, he is. Okay, well, that's good news. So worse comes to worse, you may have to reinstall the operating system if the hard drive is still functional. It sounds to me like this hard drive might have gone bad, and that's why it's not turning on anymore. But it might not be. So you'll be able to figure out when you get into that Command R, you can see what's going on there, and then you may have an option to start it up again, or you may have an option to reinstall the operating system on it. And if it still doesn't work when you try all that stuff, you might have to just replace the hard drive. What about bringing it to an Apple store? Do you have an Apple store nearby? Not nearby, no, but probably a couple hours away. Okay, well, that would be like a field trip. So you want to try to do whatever you can for this first, And then if nothing else works, there may be a local repair person in town that can replace this hard drive as well. But it sounds to me like the hard drive might have gone bad on this machine, and that's what's causing it not to start up. But I would definitely try that Command-R when you turn on your computer. So basically the way it works with Macs, when you press that power button, press and hold it off, then press and hold it on. As soon as you turn it on, press and hold Command-R for a little bit until you hear the Bing, and then it should start up in that recovery mode. But I'm going to put the links to this instructions on the website, richontech.tv. This is the Mac startup key combinations. Macs are pretty good until something like this happens, and then they're just like a head scratcher. You're like, what's going on here, Mac? And why is there no indication of what I should be doing next? Like sometimes you just start up a Mac, and it'll just have like a little hard drive with like a question mark in it or like a sad face or like all these things. You're like, I don't know what to do here. So good luck there, Kenny. Hopefully it works out. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. I do want to tell you about this story before we take another call here. This news anchor, CBS Philadelphia, news anchor, Siafa Lewis, smart guy, been around TV for a long time. He was scammed out of $7,000. $7,000 after scammers impersonated his bank and asked him to read back a one-time security code. And he did. And this is the thing. People always ask me, Rich, what about antivirus for my computer? Antivirus is probably the least of your worries at this point. It's really phishing emails. It's really fake websites. That is what people are doing nowadays. And also this, social engineering. where they call you, and apparently he thought they already had his username and password for the bank account. And the bank said, hey, there's been some issue. We need to just verify some charges or whatever. And he said, oh, okay. And banks do call you, which is kind of, this is where it's kind of a tricky thing. I was on the phone with my bank the other day, and they're asking me for all this stuff. And they said, we're going to text you a code. I said, well, dude, you sound like a scam artist right now, because the code says don't read to anyone. And you're asking me to read you this code. He's like, I know, you can call back and whatever. And, you know, it was fine. But my mom the other day, I was helping her with something. And it was across the miles. And so I said, okay, now they're going to text you a code. And I said, no, what does that code say? She goes, it says, do not tell anyone this code. I go, okay, now read me the code. And we were laughing because I was like, you're doing exactly what I'm telling you not to do. And what the text tells you not to do. She says, I know, but I trust you. I said, well, yeah, well, what if I was a fraud right now? What if I was a fake, you know, an AI voice clone? Anyway, so he gave the number and what did they do? They immediately moved $7,000 out of his account using Zelle, $3,500 twice. And instantly it's gone. Boom. And now he's fighting for that money back. But the tip here, what is the takeaway here? Number one, enable account alerts in your banking app. So every login, every transfer, every transaction over a certain dollar amount, have your bank text you. And that way, if something's happening, you see it immediately. Also, do not give out those one-time codes to anyone. Most of them say, do not tell this to anyone. Don't tell them to anyone. I don't care. And if you're wondering about who's calling you, hang up. If they try to keep you on the line, that's a definite scam because that's what they do. Like the guy when I was on with the bank, the guy goes, yeah, you can go ahead and call me back from the back of your number card or whatever, back of your card number. And I said, okay, well, I know you're not a scam artist because you're telling me I can call you back. Most of the time, they want to keep you on the phone as long as humanly possible. I was doing Zelle the other day to Zelle someone. I couldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through. You know, there's all these limits on it. You got to verify. It says this is like cash. So just be very careful. Anytime you are sending money, especially through Zelle, it is basically like giving someone cash. 888-RICH-101, back after this. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalenka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. Because you're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information nowadays, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bullshit. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies, parse data, and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Each episode, we tackle the health news of the week and then take a deeper dive into a misunderstood health and wellness topic like... What's the deal with peptides? What's the deal with GLP-1s? What's the deal with creatine? What's the deal with cupping? What's the deal with sleep? So join us for a weekly dose of sanity. It might actually be just what the doctor... Or the economist... Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMiro here hanging out with you. Talking technology. 888-RICH-101-888-742-4101. We've got the feedback coming up this hour. I'll just be honest. It is the amount of email that I get from doing this show is off the charts. I love it because it means that we're obviously hitting a nerve. People are liking what we're doing. but the downside to it is I am not physically able to reply to every email at this point. It's just not possible. I could sit and do email all day, every day, unlimited and still not be done. And I'll be honest, when I reply back to you, which I do sometimes, you reply back and then it's like another email, which I don't mind. I'm not saying don't do that. I've had some great conversations because of this show, but I'm just letting you know that I love all that feedback that you're sending me. I'm not able to respond to everything, but I do pretty much read everything. And if I find a place for it on the show or in the newsletter or in the feedback segment, you know, it could be in those places. So just know that I am looking at them. I can't always respond to every single one of them because, you know, I do have two kids and a wife as well, and a life. So sometimes on a Saturday night, I like to kind of, you know, relax a little bit. Okay, so we got that. I got to tell you about this smart ring that does blood pressure readings. And then, of course, you have a story about this, the Apple Watch and other smart watches about fall detection. But I know you guys are waiting patiently here. So let's go to Chuck in Lakewood. Chuck, what's up? Hey, Rich. Enjoy the show. Thanks. I got a deal with the – I had an Echo Dot for a while, which I really enjoyed, and I ended up getting a second one so I could have a stereo pair, which I was able to do very easily and no problem. That's cool. And now I have switched – I wanted to switch the network. On the weekends, I travel in my van. I wanted to use my hotspot on my phone and have them hooked to that. Okay. And had some problems doing that, but finally did get the one hooked up, the main one that I've always had. The second one will not go into parry mode. It just goes into the red, the solid red. I've unplugged it. I've tried to hard reset it. It won't go into that. And if it's kind of at my wits end, it won't get out of this red. Have you tried throwing it out the window of the van? Well, my van doesn't go very fast I'm not sure that would kill it Well, so what version Echo Dot is this? They're both five Okay, so it's a fifth generation That's relatively new Yeah, well, the one I got maybe two years ago And this one, since I haven't updated it I got the new one and was surprised it was still $50 But I ended up, I wanted to go back I wanted to do the stereo pairs. Okay, so a couple things. So, number one, you've tried resetting it back to its factory settings by pressing the volume down and microphone off buttons for 20 seconds. You've tried that? No. I used, per instructions I saw on the Internet, I'm using the, there's four things. There's a circle with a slash through it. And I read if you hold that down for 25 seconds, it will go into reset. Okay, so that is different because that's actually going to keep your connection to your Wi-Fi. It's going to reset everything else, but it's going to keep your connection. Okay, that's what I need to get rid of. That's what you need to get rid of. My old Wi-Fi. So that's what's happening there, I think. Okay. So what I'm seeing for the directions straight from Amazon is if you want to go back to factory, which means you're going to wipe everything clean except for you can reconnect it to Wi-Fi. It's volume down and microphone off for 20 seconds. Press and hold there and wait for the ring light to turn off and on again, and your device should enter setup mode after that. So I would try that. I think that's going to, you know, if that doesn't work, I would appeal to Amazon and just say, hey, look, my favorite term is, hey, you might want to take a look at this because you can learn from it and see what went wrong, but can you send me a new one? Can you replace this as a one-time courtesy? I know it's a couple years old, but still, you never know. But I would try that. I will link this up on the website. If it's the Echo.5 that you're talking about, then that's the way to do it. So, again, it's volume down, microphone off, 20 seconds, hold those, wait for the light to turn off, and then on again, and then it should go into setup mode. Yeah, because right now it keeps wanting to hop on that old network, and I need to reset it to that. So great. I appreciate your help today. And just a quick comment. I wanted to ask you if you could come on the Bill Handel Show maybe once a week or something and have a little session with him. That would be funny. I do, actually. Let's see. What day is it? Every Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. You do? Yes. Okay. Great. I don't know how I've missed that. Well, I mean, you know, I'll be honest. Like, I've been on for a couple years. It's been mostly every week. But when I travel or if I can't do it, obviously it's tough. But, you know, no matter what, I try to do it. But I will say during the summer this year, it's been a little challenging because I've been traveling a lot with work. And so sometimes I can't always make it. So that might be why you missed it, you know, when you tune in. But, yeah, every Tuesday morning, 8 a.m., and Bill Handel, you know, he just posted on Instagram that his show is doing really well. So in spite of having me on every week. Okay, Rich. Thanks a lot. I appreciate all your efforts. All right, Chuck, appreciate it. Thanks so much for the call today. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. Yeah, the KFI ratings ran, and they were really celebrating because they went up. I mean, they've always been good. But, you know, I mean, the way this show works, you know, we originate out of Los Angeles. But, you know, we are syndicated out to a whole bunch of stations. So KFI, I would say, is probably one of our home stations. So is 710WOR in New York City. But, you know, we're on across the nation in various places. And the show is, you know, it's live in some places. It's replayed throughout the weekend. So I'll take it all. No matter how you find me, no matter how you get in on all this, I will take it. So I appreciate you finding me as well. All right. Let me tell you about this signal ring. This is a new smart ring that does something Apple and Aura do not. Well, Apple has a watch, you know, but not a ring. But it gives you actual blood pressure numbers. This is called the signal ring. It comes from a new startup called Vital Signals. It does not require an arm cuff. So with Samsung, so Apple Watch doesn't give you numbers. It gives you like a hypertension, like you're at risk for it. Aura, I'm not really sure what they do with blood pressure, but I just actually started wearing an Aura ring to kind of evaluate it and assess it. And by the way, I love it so far. Spoiler alert, like absolutely love it. And then the Samsung watch can do blood pressure, but it has to be calibrated with a cuff once a month. So anyway, this little ring, it's called, again, the signal ring, uses high-speed optical sensor to examine the pulse wave created by each heartbeat. What? and then software estimates your systolic and diastolic pressure. You can get a reading whenever you want, or it will collect readings in the background, and you can add context to your results. So if you do a reading, you can say if you exercised, drank coffee, ate, smoked, which you shouldn't be, or experienced stress. And then this has not gotten FDA clearance, so the FDA still says this is a wellness product, but this is pretty revolutionary. battery life four days it's $399 no monthly subscription fees I was reading an interview with the founder and he said yeah everyone said we have to do a subscription I did not want to do a subscription so we'll see how long that can last but shipping expected in October 2026 founder Tom Moss says he created it after being hospitalized with a systolic blood systolic blood pressure reading of 250 and discovering how difficult it was to monitor his pressure throughout a normal day So this is a game changer for people that are monitoring or actively monitoring their blood pressure If this does as promised and I not tested this this could be a big shift in how people monitor their blood pressure. And it's just one more sign that these smartwatches and these smart rings are just continuing to really do so much in the realm of health. I think the next holy grail is really blood glucose monitoring. I know people want that. There is nothing official or non-official that can do that right now through a smartwatch. But when they can do the non-invasive blood glucose, that is going to be a huge paradigm shift for so many millions of people who have to monitor their glucose readings. All right. Let's see. Can we go? Yeah, we can do more calls. 888-RICH-101, 888-742-4101. The website, richontech.tv for everything I mentioned. And if you're not following me on Instagram, I am at rich on tech. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, yada, yada, yada, do all that stuff. You know, just get in on it. Back after this. Welcome back to rich on tech. Got a lot of news to get through before I take one final call on the show. So I'm going to try to get through a lot of this quickly so we can get to our caller here. If you paid for YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream, these live streaming services, anytime between April 2019 and March 2026, you might qualify for cash. This is a $50 million settlement involving customers because of Disney and YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream. So basically, you go to OnlineTVSettlement.com. Make sure you go to that official website. You have to file your claim by September 8th. I got an email about this in my email. So I would search your email for the settlement. Disney, let's see, I'll tell you what it said. It was Disney. Let's see, it says Biddle versus Walt Disney Company. So just type in Biddle Disney, B-I-D-D-L-E Disney in your email search, and you should come up with the official because you do need your, they give you like a PIN number. What is it? Let's see, a unique ID and a PIN number to submit your claim. I don't know how much you get from this, but obviously the attorneys make the most money. You'll get like a couple bucks. The attorneys will be buying lobster somewhere off the coast of the Caribbean. Speaking of flying somewhere, cheapest week to fly this summer, August 17th. Skyscanner looked at the cheapest week, analyzed a whole bunch of data. August 17th to August 23rd is the cheapest week to fly this summer. Oh, great, right when the kids go back to school. So nobody can actually travel during this weekend unless you're retired. Cheapest day to fly is Monday. So that's a good place to start. If you're traveling internationally, some popular cities have sweet spots for cheap flights. London, August 10th through 16th. Tokyo, August 31st through September 6th. Rome, August 10th through 16th. Paris, August 31st through September 6th. What is the underlying factor here for all these dates is that, yes, it's right when kids go back to school. Of course it's going to be cheap. Um, they also highlight some places to go that are less crowded, like Punta Gorda, Asheville, North Carolina, I'm guessing, Colorado Springs, Bozeman, and Burlington, Vermont. Uh, let's see what else. Skyscanner everywhere search. They're saying that's a good way to look for flexible, cheapest destinations from your home airport if you're flexible about where to go. I've not tested that, but now I got to check it out. Skyscanner everywhere search. All right. But Samsung says its new foldables will finally have a less noticeable crease. They're teasing us new display technology called Flex Titanium. This is the head of Galaxy Unpacked happening this week in London. Samsung says the titanium layer they're using on their new foldables is 20 times stiffer than the old material it replaces, but it's still thin and flexible enough to be folded thousands of times. Samsung is unveiling its new foldable phones on July 22nd. That is Wednesday in London. Very much looking forward to seeing what they have in store. Okay, let's go to Dwayne in Southern California. Dwayne, you're on with Rich. Yeah, a couple of problems I have. We're limited to just tech problems, Dwayne. What do you mean? We're limited to just tech problems on this show. No problem. I have a Macintosh 16, and I update it all the time. The last time, I think they snuck something on me, and when I do a search for something, all of a sudden the ASK window, ASK window, comes up. Okay. And I don't know how to get rid of it. I do Apple delete, and nothing seems to work. How do I get rid of it? I want to see the whole screen because it takes about half the screen with this window, and it's disconcerting. Yeah, it's malware. So basically something got downloaded. It could have been an ad you clicked. It could have gotten on there a lot of different ways, but this is malware. So are you using Safari? When does this pop up? I'm using Safari. Okay. So I think this is – it sounds like this could be a Safari extension. So I would go into, I'm trying to find where this is. We open up Safari, and then we go into Safari Extensions, okay? Can you do this while we're on or no? I will do it right now, Safari Extensions. Okay, do you see that? Upper left-hand corner where it says Safari in the menu bar, it says Safari Extensions. Okay, do you see any extensions listed there where it says installed? It says, no, it just says add extensions. Let's see here. Let me go to extensions. Okay, so there's nothing installed there? Nothing. Okay, that's good. So that means that this is either something that is more on your computer, like an app that is installed on your computer at large, or this could just be served up by a notification spam, which means you would just have to clear all of your history on Safari, and that might make it go away. Have you tried doing that? Nope, I have not. Okay, so that's the next step I would do. You're going to lose all your history, but if you go into Safari again, and then it says clear history. Clear history, got it. And it'll say clear all history, and that may take care of it. Now, if that doesn't, the only other thing I would say to do is go through your application list and see if there's any applications there you don't use or recognize, especially anything that says search helper or anything like that, get rid of it. And then the other thing you could do is look at your startup. So if you go into, I think it's, let's see, open at login. So if you go into your settings and you type, you know, that little settings icon, system settings. Right. Inside there you can search. If you search for login, it will bring up something called open at login. And this is great to look at in general because these are all the applications that try to open up and do things when you first turn on your computer. And a lot of times, applications sneak in there. You don't necessarily need them. So where it says open at login, there's a whole list of applications. And I actually just did this the other day to kind of prune mine. But you can go through and delete. Highlight an application. If you don't need it to turn on when you open your computer, you can delete that from that list. And sometimes things like Spotify will sneak into there or whatever. And every time you turn on your computer, all these windows pop open. But have you tried doing a search, Dwayne, since then, and has the Ask box popped up again? Not lately. Well, it hasn't popped up right now. Okay. So we might have fixed it with the clearing history. Maybe so. Yeah. One other question? I don't have time for another question. You're going to have to call back next week. I know you waited on hold so long, Dwayne. I'm sorry. But we've got to run here to our guest. But thanks for the call today. Really appreciate it. But generally, when you're getting those pop-ups on your browser, it's either an extension that's installed or it is something that is living in the browser as a notification spam. And if you clear your history out on your browser, sometimes that stuff goes away. All right, back after this, we're going to talk smart homes coming up next. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology. The website for the show is richontech.tv. So if you want anything that I mentioned on today's show, I know there's a lot of it, just go to richontech.tv slash 183. That will bring you to the show notes. We've got a great guest coming on next. Before we get to him, I just want to mention this. Did a story this week on TV about this woman, 86 years old, lives alone. Daughters live about, you know, the closest family member lives about four hours away. She was exercising. She fell. She hit her head, lost consciousness. Doesn't remember any of that. But what saved her, her Apple Watch. It called her or alerted her daughters that she fell, took a hard fall. And so they were able to send a neighbor to her house. She was in the ICU for a while. She actually had all kinds of injuries, really sad. But she's doing okay now. But she is like a new believer in the Apple Watch. So we interviewed her. And, you know, we've heard of this feature before. And we've heard it saved many lives. And it's helped many people. But this fall detection feature is on Apple Watch. It's on Galaxy Watch from Samsung. It's on the Pixel Watch. They all have some form of fall detection. So basically, if you fall, it will ask if you're okay. If you don't respond, it might call emergency services or alert your contacts. So check the settings. I've got the list of how to check the settings on the Apple Watch, the Samsung Watch, and the Pixel Watch on the website, richontech.tv. Don't assume the feature is active, especially if you recently replaced your watch or did something. and also take a minute to review your emergency contacts. If you don't want a smartwatch, Medical Guardian, Life Alert are two similar options that you can look into, but please check those settings on the Apple Watch. It could make a big difference. All right, joining me now is Tobin Richardson, CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, making our smart homes easier to actually be smart. Tobin, thanks for joining me today. Thanks so much, Rob. Great to be here. So explain what you guys do at the Connectivity Standards Alliance. You're basically working with manufacturers to what, make them play nice? That's exactly right. We're really the industry group that makes sure your smart home devices from different brands actually work together and that they're secure. So similar to other technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, those just work in the background. We operate the same way. We have hundreds of companies from around the planet all working together, and our job is to try and make sure they play nicely together inside as well as for consumers everywhere. Yeah, because the nice thing is, like, the other day I was setting up some lights, and it was so easy because they were matter-enabled, and you literally just, I think I just scanned a QR code or a barcode on there, and it was like, boom, in 10 seconds it was set up. And I loved it. I smiled. I said, this is the way it should be. So how tough is it to get to that point? Yeah, it's tougher than you would think because you've got to deal with companies that, you know, rightly are looking to create cool products, cool experiences, and then hold on to you, right? which is important for companies to be able to build profitable products. But in order for us to get to that larger vision where everything else just works nicely together, they've really got to bring the walls down, open up the way that their devices interact, and that's where organizations like ours come in where we can get everybody to do just that. Are there any notable holdouts? I know, is Apple part of Matter? Is Google part of it? Is there any notable company that's not doing this right now at this point? not anyone but I would say is taking smart home seriously and you hit the large ones and that's really you know some of those companies Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, smart things and those are you know brands in the west and around the world you're seeing companies really start to embrace this and understand that if we're going to get to really smart home and get past you know what are used to be just a you know a few gadgets that might work together to something that is really just as smooth as you described it, right? I mean, just scan a QR code, tap a device with an NFC, just like we do for paying at the store, making things that easy. You have to have open standards. You have to have orgs like ours. So there aren't really too many more holdouts in terms of the large ecosystem players. And every company with a serious line of products is going to be making matter products here soon. And the idea is that, you know, back in the day when we were talking about smart home, it was like you had to be in a silo. It was like, okay, if you want to do Google Assistant, you've got to get all the products that work with Google Assistant. If you want to do Alexa, you've got to do Amazon stuff. Nowadays, the idea is that if these all have this Matter standard or whatever standards you guys are working on, you can mix and match from all sorts of brands. Yeah, exactly right. And that's really the whole focus of Matter is to be able to deliver that. Early on, companies were going to, you know, make one, two or three products, do it really well. But everybody was doing that in different silos. And so, you know, when they all come together under one tent and, you know, so, for instance, you and I might create, you know, different thermostats, do it a bit of a different way. But we realized, you know, consumers don't want to be locked into, you know, a single product, single ecosystem for the rest of their lives. So how do you enable that? And we saw this with the Internet. It used to be on AOL, you know, CompuServe and things like that. And eventually, you didn't have to create these barriers to get to the same website or the same chat room. And so the same way that we saw the Internet open up, you're seeing the smart home open up as well. Standards are so nice. If anyone can convince – well, I guess – okay, I'm sorry. I was going to do a tangent about iMessage. But I guess they do RCS begrudgingly. But anyway, so you said that you're making more secure. And how is that changing, like the security of all this? Because, you know, this is stuff that's in our home. And I often think about this when I when I link up a product, let's say I get a, you know, some random product. I'm bringing that into my network. Right. So like it has access to like, you know, my path, you know, not my password, but like, well, I guess it does technically. But explain that. Yeah, no, security and privacy are related, related pieces. Right. And they're super important for consumers. And the way that we do that is, you know, we basically bring in the smartest and the strongest security experts around the planet. So you talked about, you know, whether it's one company's security experts. When you have the best networking security experts from Google, Apple, Amazon, Schneider Electric, Legrand, you know, company brands that you may not know about that are, you know, basically doing networking around the planet, and then you basically raise the floor in terms of security for devices. As we look at, you know, just millions and billions of different devices that are out there, It's a huge risk that we have to be careful around. And so the same way that the Internet is secure, as secure as it is, is because it's an open standard. It's out in the open. It's open source. Everybody knows how it works. So, yes, there may be vulnerabilities, but we know how to fix those quickly. So as you move away from closed ecosystems where you don't know how they're running security to the open standards under ours, then you have the benefit of knowing that if somebody's using, you know, a Matter Certification Matter technology, you know that it's not just going to interoperate. It's going to have the best security available in the industry, the same way that we expect security for the Internet itself. That's good to know. So those lights that I was linking up the other day, even though, you know, let's say they come from a company that I may not be completely familiar with, as long as they have that Matter connectivity, I can feel rest assured that it's protecting my privacy and security of my home network? Exactly. And we, you know, to get that certification, the bar is higher. And, you know, network technology is complex, so you've got to make it simple for consumers, which means the burden is on the companies to do all the hard work in the background so that it just works and that it, you know, goes into the background but also is as secure as possible. So they have to go through a number of different steps. The security parameters within the device itself are, you know, at a level that we've not really ever seen before in terms of connected devices. and we have some other tricks up our sleeve in terms of how we credential devices that make them more secure, how we use a blockchain essentially to ensure that devices that show up in your network are the ones that are supposed to be on your network. So there are a lot of different mechanical ways that we can push companies to do that. And, again, everybody's come together to agree on just how to do that. Anything people should look for when they buy smart home products? You know, I think if you're looking for the first time you've not been in a smart home game, start with something simple. I started with lights and a couple of switches. I happen to be a Boston Red Sox fan, so this was like 15 years ago. And, you know, used an ESPN app, tied it to a smart automation. Every time the Red Sox won, the lights would turn red. And that was cool. And so, you know, I can use that lighting mechanism for something else now, but at least it gave me an idea. So now I have a lot of automations. I have a lot of other things that I can take advantage of when I'm traveling. I can keep track of what's happening around the house, make sure that everything's secure. So there are a lot of, you know, a lot of different applications. But I think, you know, start simple. Start with something you know and get to know it and then kind of take it from there. I've got about a minute. Curious, is AI doing anything in the smart home realm? Yeah, absolutely. AI is really a game changer where the first step to getting to smart homes for everybody is open standards. The next step for really getting all the cool benefits and value is AI. Having all these rules-based approaches in the background just take place, effectively AI will make the home feel smarter, not more complicated, and it will start to learn your routine, but you always stay in control of what gets automated. So it's a really powerful tool for making homes smarter and that whole experience better. All right, Tobin Richardson from the Connectivity Standards Alliance. Any website you want to direct folks to to learn more about all this? Definitely. CSA-IOT.org. That's CSA-InternetofThings.org. It's IOT.org for short. Please join us. All right. Building the foundation and future of IOT. Thanks for joining me today. My dream is to get all my smart home stuff in working order. Like I've built it over the years, and I need to, like, maintain it. You know what I mean? Like get everything working together, which will be my goal. maybe in retirement. All right, coming up next, we are going to open up the feedback to hear from you. That's coming up right here on Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here, hanging out with you, talking technology, the website richontech.tv. One quick story before we get into the feedback. I saw this on, I believe it was TechCrunch, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. People, if you don't want, you know how everyone's using these AI note taking apps to record and transcribe and summarize meetings automatically? Well, they tell the story of this one guy who, if you don't want people to do that with you on the call, change your Zoom name to whatever your name is. I do not consent to transcribing or recording. And that way you've kind of said your thing, which is like, hey, don't record me. That's it. So anyway, I thought that was pretty interesting. All right, let's open up the feedback. These are the emails, the comments, the questions I get from you, starting with Dr. Tanya. This is a prominent pediatrician in the Los Angeles area. She told me a story how she was flying American Airlines from LAX to Charlotte. She was scanned in through Clear, boarded the plane. Somehow the airline marked her as a no-show. While she was still in the air, American canceled her return flight, removed the trip and her boarding pass right from its app. Like it just vanished. The crew she talked to said it took more than an hour to prove that she had actually been on the plane and get her return ticket reinstated. So her advice, always screenshot your boarding pass before you fly. Once hers disappeared from the app, she had no easy way to prove what happened. That is just, that is quite the story. Can you imagine just watching? It's like Back to the Future where the front page of the USA Today just like transforms before your eyes. That was probably her looking at the app on her phone like, this is just going away. Wait, don't go. I told you about Speechify last week, how you can use it for free voice to text. I got a lot of emails from you saying it was very frustrating to figure that out, and I agree. So Speechify is trying to sell you on their speech to text app. On the Mac, on the Windows side of things, there is a separate app to download, not the standard Speechify app. So number one, that's the number one thing. Number two, on the phone, it only works on iPhone, and it basically is the regular Speechify app, but you can skip all the stuff about subscriptions and three-day trials and all that stuff and just skip it, and then once you install the app and get it up and running, you then go into your settings and enable the keyboard, the Speechify keyboard, and it does work. I used it all week for the past two weeks, I think, at this point, and it is very good for free speech-to-text. Uh, Silvana says, I thought I was speaking with a Norton support, but about 20 minutes into the call, I realized it might be a scam. I'd already given the quote unquote technician remote access to my computer. Uh-oh. I hung up, I shut down the computer and changed my Apple ID and banking passwords. This is a good reminder not to trust customer support numbers you find through Google and to trust your gut. Uh, definitely uninstall that remote access program that they had you install. That's the way they get access to all the stuff in your computer and really make your life miserable. Joseph, I was doing yard work and listening to the podcast, practically yelling the answer. Call the credit card company and close the account. My sister-in-law had an impossible time canceling a subscription after her husband died. She closed the card account and poof, the problem was solved. Yes, this was a caller who said they were helping a friend. They wanted to figure out all the subscriptions the late person had. and I did mention at some point to cancel the credit card and that would make it easier, but that is a tricky thing. But yes, canceling the card should work, but sometimes these credit card companies actually give your number, the new number, to recurring subscriptions, which is just wild. You'll notice, you'll be like, wait, I never transferred that over. Sure enough, they gave the number. Nick, I agree with your advice not to take a sledgehammer to a computer, monitor, tablet, or phone. The consequences can be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. Back in the 1980s, a man in Texas even offered a service where you can mail him your Mac, pay him to shoot it with a shotgun, and have the damaged computer sent back. Those older Macs contain extremely high voltage, even after being unplugged, so opening or destroying them could be deadly. Did I say that? I guess we did talk about destroying hard drives, maybe. Tom, I heard you say you weren't too sure about Teemu. I've had a great experience with them. They seem to have everything, the prices are good, and whenever I've had a problem, they've taken care of it right away. Okay, there you go. I've got to try Teemu one of these days. Mark in Long Beach, president of the Associated Radio Amateurs of Long Beach. After you mentioned our field day event at Recreation Park, several people stopped by because they heard about it on your show. A few even joined our club. Thanks for the shout-out. It gave our amateur radio celebration a real boost. Okay, there you go. Amateur radio. Leah in California says, My senior brother was scammed out of $50,000 after receiving a device in the mail that appeared to come from Wells Fargo. The scammers called from a number that also looked like the bank and told them to activate the device. Once he followed their instructions, they transferred money out of his savings account. Wells Fargo denied his claim three times and says he is responsible under its user agreement. Really? Wells Fargo, I would rethink that. I think someone's finding a new bank immediately, and I would fight that to the end. Bob, in response to the caller whose T-Mobile router wouldn't allow a period in the Wi-Fi name. Some routers restrict special characters when setting up a network name. I think that's what we figured out in that situation. Gilda, my husband, was looking for WNBA tickets on his phone when he saw an offer for a free McDonald's burger and tapped it. I mean, who wouldn't? Suddenly, a loud alarm started blaring and an Amazon warning appeared, even though he doesn't have an Amazon account. He panicked and was about to press the call button, but I stopped him, took a screenshot, and swiped out of it. The loud sound is scary because it makes you feel like you need to act quickly. Thanks for letting people know about this one. I enjoy your segments. Yes, this is a common malvertising scam. It is designed to make you panic. After you swipe out of the app, go into Safari or your Chrome and clear out your history. Delete the browsing data because sometimes these companies will keep stuff on there and they'll pop back up again. uh diano i saw your segment about the apple watch helping that woman the same thing happened to me last july i fainted from dehydration in the bathroom and 9-1-1 and my family arrived at the same time i've been telling everyone my age to get a watch with fall detection and several friends have taken my advice thanks for bringing attention to this feature uh diano i am um glad you're okay and yes, it is a good feature to have. Let's see here. What do we have time for? Maria in Los Angeles. I just finished listening to Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. It's the tell-all about Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the company's culture. If you haven't read or listened to it yet, that meta AI feature you mentioned won't surprise you. The book has generated a lot of discussion and even legal battles with meta over its claims. yeah I gotta put that on my reading list Jim in Arizona a lot of the stories you share in your radio show remind me of things I do that's because we're both nerds when I moved into my Arizona home in 2019 I tried to figure out what every switch did and labeled them as I went but even after checking every outlet there's still a few switches I've never been able to figure out and Jonathan when I was a kid I put Dymo remember we talked about Dymo labels last week I put Dymo labels on everything Even on the side of my dad's glasses. One day at the park, some older kids said they could guess my name. After pretending to use psychic powers, they got it right. I excitedly told my dad, who said, You put one of those labels on your hat with your name on it, you dummy. Did he really call you a dummy? I still laugh about it today, and I love the podcast and your never-too-long newsletter. And finally, Bob from Charlotte listening on WBT-FM, Sundays at 2 p.m. Thanks for your good work. Keep it coming. 73 from amateur radio station WA4VEG. All right, that's going to do it for this show. Thanks so much for listening. One reminder before I go, put down that phone while you drive. Please, those texts can wait. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Bobo, Kim, my guests, and especially you for listening. My name is Rich DeMuro. I will talk to you real soon. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, It's a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out. Shout out to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashawn Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert. And I'm Perry Wilson. I'm a medical doctor. And this is our new podcast, Wellness Actually. You're getting a staggering amount of health and wellness information, and some of it is awesome. And some of it is, well, actually, bulls**t. Fortunately, we're both people who know how to read studies and can tell you what's worth trying out and what you can safely ignore. Listen to Wellness Actually on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. As parents, we have a million things running through our minds. Play dates, checkups, laundry, diapers, work, groceries. So it's easy to make a mistake. Oh, I forgot birthday candles. We say we'd never put our kids in danger by leaving them in the car alone. Sit tight, hon. I'll be right back. But temperatures as low as 60 degrees can be deadly for children left behind. So always bring them with you. And every time you park the car, stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. From daily news to dating fails, conspiracy theories to cooking with celebrities who can't actually cook, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts ready to entertain, included with Prime.