How to avoid malware & best password managers

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fishing and malware get worse. Details of a new report.
Apple plans one more event before the end of the year,
and they raise prices. Self driving cars take a back
seat at least for now. Plus your tech questions answered.
What's going on in Rich Demiro and this is Rich

(00:23):
on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast.
Happy Halloween weekend. What's going on? 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. After all, I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful, and fun. We got the whole

(00:47):
crew here, Bobo on the board, we got Kim on phones,
we got Rich on the radio. Phone lines are open
triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. Phone lines
eight eight eight seven four to two four to one

(01:08):
zero one. Give me a call. If you have a
question about technology. Email also an option just go to
my website rich on Tech dot tv. Hit the link
that says contact. We've got some great guests this week.
Mark Stockley, senior threat intelligence researcher at Malware Bites. We're

(01:29):
gonna talk all about malware, what it is, how to
protect yourself, how to identify it on your computer. Really
good conversation there. Then we've got Luke Caney, co founder
and co director of the Fair Opportunity Project. They have
built an AI tool to help students maximize their financial aid.
So if you have a student that's going to college

(01:50):
and they're filling out all this financial aid stuff, AI
might be able to help.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
I hope you're having a great day. Thanks for tuning in,
thanks for listening. Let's see what is going on this week.
You heard the opening music Old Dominion. Went to a
last minute concert? Isn't that the best? Aren't last minute things? Okay?
You plan all this stuff in your life, right. You
plan vacations, you plan concerts that are a year away,

(02:17):
you plan birthdays, weddings. But for some reason, when you
decide at three o'clock in the afternoon to do something,
that always turns out to be like the most fun event.
I don't know why that is. But we were not
able to find babysitters for this concert. Our friends asked
us to go to for a very long time, and
we just couldn't. Until the last day. My wife decides
to ask her mom, and she's like, hey, mom, you

(02:39):
know there's an Old Dominion concert tonight. I don't know
if you could do it, but you know, the mom
was like, wait, I love Old Dominion. I'll watch your
kids so you can have that great time. And sure
enough they did. Now they've been to a concert too,
so she was actually gonna say she couldn't watch our
kids and then take the two tickets, but she didn't
do that. But it's so wild. The concert was great.
I it's just so interesting how I'm always looking for

(03:02):
the tech in everything that I'm doing, no matter what,
whether it's going to a concert, whether it's going you know,
I just like to see how tech is affecting people's lives.
And something as simple as concert going has been just
revolutionized by technology. So, for instance, tickets, So we were
meeting our friends. They had two tickets, We had two tickets.
You know, they email us the tickets like nowadays, when

(03:24):
you send someone tickets it is through email. Remember back
in the day, you'd be outside of a concert venue
and someone would whisper tickets, tickets, tickets. That just doesn't
even happen anymore because of technology. They've almost gotten rid
of that entire last minute outside the gate ticket situation.
Now it's all digital and people sell tickets right up
into the last couple of minutes of a concert. Because

(03:46):
it's all transferred digitally and instantly through the app. You're
not bringing a paper ticket anymore. Ninety nine percent of
the time, we went out to dinner before and we're
waiting in line at the restaurant, and you can't even
go up to the front deck and request a reservation
at this restaurant. There's a big giant QR code that
says scan this QR code to make a reservation at

(04:07):
this restaurant. So to make a reservation you have to
go through open table. You just used to walk into
a restaurant and say, hey, can I get a table
for two? No, no, no, not anymore. People are planning
their reservations at restaurants like weeks and months in advance.
There's some restaurants, if it's a really hot one, you
literally have to get online a certain amount of days
in advance, you know, three months at the exact time

(04:29):
they released those reservations to get a restaurant reservation there. Now,
I personally don't necessarily like going to those types of
restaurants because they're overhyped in my opinion, and I'd rather
wait to see if it stands the test of time.
But that's just me. What about once we were inside
the arena, they had the just walk out technology from Amazon,
so it wasn't labeled that way, but it was so

(04:51):
Amazon just walk out. If you haven't tried this, it's
a whole bunch of cameras in the ceiling. You use
your credit card or your debit card to get into
the store. It opens up a little I don't know
what you call it, kind of like a turnpike kind
of thing. You walk in and the cameras identify you
and they link you to your card, and then you

(05:12):
pick out whatever you want in this case, you know,
beer and snacks and things like that, and then you
walk out. Now, the best part was you don't realize
how expensive all this stuff is because you are at
an arena. What is it with the arenas? This suspension
of disbelief? There are only a few places that we
go to where for some reason we just suspend all
beliefs about what things should cost, right, and a stadium

(05:32):
is one of those places. You go into a stadium,
they could tell you any price in the world and
you're like, Okay, that's what it costs to buy a
pretzel here nine bucks a beer eighteen nineteen twenty two dollars.
I mean, what is going on in these places? But
yet we all do it. Same thing with a movie theater.
You go in there, suspension of disbelief. Should popcorn really

(05:54):
be nineteen seventeen eighteen dollars? Whatever?

Speaker 3 (05:57):
It is?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Sure you're in a movie theater. That's the way it is.
Trying to think of some other places. What are some
other places that have this whole pricing disbelief situation where
we're just like whatever, we'll accept it. Now, this was
kind of interesting. On the way out of the concert. Now,
we took an uber there. Oh, I'll tell you about this.
So my wife and I have this thing. Now this
may not apply in your city, but in Los Angeles

(06:20):
sometimes you are in an uber for an hour, literally
a solid hour to get to an event because it
is just traffic in this city is unbelievable. And so
last night our drive to the arena was a solid
hour inside an uber. And so my wife and I
we don't like to talk in the back of an
uber because it's kind of awkward. You're sitting there in

(06:42):
the back, like discussing things, and there's this person in
the front that's literally just like listening or not listening,
or pretending they're not listening, but of course they're listening.
We're all human. We want to hear what everyone's saying.
So my wife and I have devised this new situation
where we bring our AirPods into the back of the
uber and we both just listen to something on our AirPods,
whether it's a podcast, whether it's the radio, whether it's music,

(07:05):
whether I was listening to an audiobook last night, And
that's what we do. So we literally sit in silence
for the entire hour, and then we use the opportunity
to just relax. Sometimes I've fallen asleep, and then we
get to the place and that's when we decide to talk,
because you know, you feel like you can talk. So
that's our little thing. I don't know. We told our
friends that last night, and they're like, that's genius. We

(07:26):
love that idea because it's so awkward to talk in
the back of an uber, you know, cause they're just
it's funny because they act like they're not listening and
then all of a sudden they chime in with something
about what you're talking about, and you're like, wait, I
thought you weren't listening. I thought this was the you know,
So that was really funny. But we do that all
the time now. And there's actually a little pro tip
is that you can audio share. So if you want

(07:49):
to listen to the same thing, like at one point
we're listening to the same I forget what it was, podcast, audiobook,
whatever it was, radio music, you can share on the iPhone.
And so if you both have AirPods. Now, this is
what I love about Apple. Of course, you have to
use Apple products to do this right, So you both
have to have air pods or beats for you to
be able to share your audio on an iPhone. But

(08:10):
if you swipe down into your control center, press a
hold on the volume, you can share your audio among
two different air pods or Beats headphones, so you can
both listen to the same thing from one device. Now,
if you're on a Samsung, of course it's Android, they
make it a little bit easier. So if you're on
Android a Samsung specifically, you can do the same exact thing,

(08:31):
but with any headphones. So if you swipe down and
you have to pair both headphones to your phone, but
if you swipe down from the top, it says media
output and from there you will see both pairs of
headphones pop up and just select both of them and
now you can listen to the same thing amongst two people.
And so if you want to share the experience of
whatever you're listening to, that's the way you can do it.

(08:53):
So you can do it on iPhone or Samsung. It's
just a little bit easier on Samsung because you can
use any brand headphones you want. And yes, Airpod's pair
with the samsungs Now. On the way home from the concert,
we did something that was just wild and crazy. Thank
you you like that. Bobo is a big Samsung fan,
so he's anytime we talked Samsung, he breaks out the applause.

(09:17):
But on the way home, we did something totally wild.
Instead of trying to wrangle an uber or a lyft.
At the end of the concert, when there's ten thousand
people all trying to get a car, there was a
line of taxi cabs and I went up to the
taxi guy and he's like, do you need a ride?
I said, yeah, is this the way people used to
do it? You just literally hop into the back of
a taxi cab, and we did and it was so

(09:38):
great and the driver was amazing. Now he actually recognized
me from TV, which was funny because he's like, I
knew who you were, and I was like, all right, well,
thank you, now you know where I live. Nice guy though,
he was, and it was such a great experience. It
might have been a little bit expressed. I'm trying to
remember how much the uber quoted versus a taxi, and

(09:59):
I think that that was the experience in the taxi
that hadn't had in a while, watching the meter run up,
because that is the biggest difference between a taxi, traditional
taxi and an uber. Uber. You kind of know how
much you're gonna spend at the beginning. With a taxi,
it's a surprise. But also it was kind of fun.
I felt like I was living a little bit. I
was watching this meter go up and I was like,
all right, let's see how much this can be. And yeah,

(10:21):
it was a decent amount of money, but it was
also kind of nice, and the driver was great. It
was very professionally. He said he'd been doing it ten
years and I will say I was very impressed. I
I would highly recommend trying a taxi once in your
life when you see that line of people outside a
theater or an event like go with the taxi and
just see what it's like. I'm not knocking Uber. Believe me.
I love Uber. It's gotten me around in many cities

(10:41):
around the world. But it was just a fun experience.
All right, let's talk some more technology. We got your
calls up next to triple eight rich one oh one.
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four to
one zero one. Give me a call if you have
a question about technology. We'll talk all kinds of stuff today.
My name is rich Duimiro and thank you are listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

(11:05):
Rich Demiro here talking technology with you at triple eight
rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one. Free call from anywhere
inside the US. Jamie just wrote me on my Instagram
at rich on Tech and said totally AirPods in the Uber.
And we also text each other, and that's the other

(11:26):
thing I meant to mention that yes, my wife and
I will text each other to keep our valve of
silence in the backseat of the Uber. Oh fun times.
All right, let's go to Marvin in Denver, Colorado. Marvin,
you're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Hi. Rich are you doing.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
I'm doing fantastic. How are you good?

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Say? I'm trying to get some information on a guest
you had on some time ago who had developed a
computer program for baseball cards, another sports member of BILIA.
This has been about a year ago. But I didn't
catch his phone number. I think his name might have
been ted Man, but I'm not positive of that.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, good memory.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
How to get in touch with that guest?

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Absolutely? Okay, so the good question, and thanks for calling.
But so I looked on the website if you go
to rich on tech dot TV, that's where you can
typically find anything that I mentioned on the show. And
so I will tell you. I typed in baseball to
find obviously you know, baseball card scanning, and nothing came up.

(12:31):
So you are absolutely right, Marvin, you had one part
of the equation. But here's what happened. So the notes
are on there, and the app, by the way, is
called collect c l l X. This was invented by
a new Jersey Dad and his son. You're right. His
name is Ted Man. We did a segment with him
both on TV and on the radio.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Here.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
It's a really cool app that helps you scan your
cards and figure out what the value of them is
in seconds. So the app uses instant image recognition to
recognize the card and provides its current market value. You
can build and track your entire collection. One of my
friends kept texting me after I had talked about this app.
I think it was up to like a couple thousand

(13:12):
bucks worth of cards on the app, and of course
you can use the app to connect with other collectors, buy, sell,
and trade cards, and there's a whole bunch of stuff.
This thing has just taken on a life of its own.
I think they added some new AI features as well.
But again, the app is called Collex co l lx
dot app and Tedman is on there. He's the founder,

(13:35):
like you said, and you can email him through the
website as well. But the reason why you couldn't find
it on my website is because baseball was not in
the description. I wrote it down as it says Tedman,
creator of the Collex app, which lets you scan your
sports card collection. So I should have said. I should
have said, I mean including baseball cards because I figured.

(13:58):
And by the way, that show was on eleventh, twenty
twenty three. That was the sixth episode of the radio show.
So good memory, thanks for calling, appreciate that, and good
luck scanning your cards. All right, let's talk about some
of the things I mentioned earlier. We've got an Apple
event happening this week October thirtieth. It is called Scary Fast,

(14:21):
and the event is expected to focus on new max,
likely an M three version of the iMac and potentially
an M three thirteen inch MacBook Pro. So whenever there's
an Apple event, I caution you not to buy any
Apple products until after the event. So from now until Monday,
October thirtieth, at five pm Pacific, I think is what

(14:44):
it is, Yeah, five pm Pacific. The event is live stream.
This is not in person. I got an invite, just
literally a link to watch this online like everyone else.
So a new twenty four inch iMac with an M
three chip is rumored, and that replaces the current M
one iMac from twenty twenty one. Now, again these are rumors.
We don't know if it's all gonna happen, but then

(15:05):
you've got the thirteen inch MacBook Pro without a touchbar
and an update to the M three chip. Now there's
also some other rumors out there, maybe some new iPads
fourteen inch and sixteen inch MacBook pros not expected to
get an update because they just launched a while ago.
And when it comes to any Apple products, by the way,
I like to look up the website Buyer's Guide dot

(15:26):
MacRumors dot com, Buyer's Guide dot MacRumors dot com. So
if you're thinking about buying an Apple product, what they
do is they time out exactly how long it's been
since the last product was launched, and then they tell
you typically like okay, let's say for the iPhone. Typically
the average life cycle of the iPhone is three hundred

(15:48):
and sixty five days, and it's been forty three days
since its last release, So that means you could safely
buy a new iPhone because it's only been forty three days. Now.
If you look at something like the iPhone, the average
release time is seven hundred and twenty five days between releases,
and right now it's been five hundred and ninety nine days,
so they say caution approaching the end of its life cycle,

(16:10):
which means Apple may come out with a new iPhone.
Se Now let's take a look at the iMac which
we were just talking about. iMac don't buy because it's
typically three hundred and ninety eight days between releases. Right
now we are at nine hundred and eleven days between releases.

(16:32):
So that's just to give you an idea. I always
say with Apple products, especially the popular ones, you kind
of want to get them right when they come out,
because Apple is really good at refreshing their product lines,
like on a very timely manner, and so the second
that device comes out, it is almost like a ticking
clock of when the next one is going to come out,

(16:52):
So that is something to keep in mind. Also wanted
to mention that Apple raised prices on almost all of
its subscription services, so Apple TV Plus going up from
six ninety nine a month to nine ninety nine, News
Plus nine nine nine to twelve ninety nine, Arcade four
ninety nine to six ninety nine a month, and then
these Apple one Bundle plans going up from sixteen ninety

(17:14):
five to nineteen ninety five a month. The Premiere plan,
the one that I pay for, which started out as
twenty nine ninety nine, then it went up to thirty
two ninety nine. Now it's up to thirty seven ninety
nine a month. So this is it's just the way
of the world right now with all of these streaming services,
every single company is raising prices. All right. Coming up next,

(17:36):
we're going to talk to our first guests. Who's gonna
tell us about their AI chatbot or actually we're gonna
talk malware. Let's talk malware, how to avoid it, what
it is, and how you can avoid it on your system.
You're listening to rich on tech. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking
technology at triple eight rich one oh one, eighty eight

(17:59):
seven four to two. So for one zero one we're
gonna do an interview right now. But if you have
a question about technology, give me a call, get in
with Kim. She will get you queued up so you
can be on air and ask your question about whatever
you want, whatever's vexin you, whatever you need help with,
looking for an app for something, need a recommendation. I
am all ears at triple eight rich one oh one.

(18:20):
That's eight eight eight seven four to two, four one
zero one. Joining me now, is Mark Stockley, senior threat
intelligence researcher at malware Bites. Mark is joining us from
the UK today. Mark, Thanks and welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Thanks very much, great to be here.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Well, thank you. So let's talk about this dreaded term
called malware. What is malware exactly?

Speaker 4 (18:48):
So malware is malicious software.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
So it's just like the computer programs that you have
on your computer, but its intentions are bad. So it's
there basically to try and make money from you, and
it will do that generally by stealing something from you
or trying to extort you.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
And what are some common signs that your computer or
device may be infected with malware?

Speaker 5 (19:13):
Okay, so these come with big caveats. So you may
find that your computer is running slowly, you may find
that your computer is running hot, you may find that
you're inundated with pop up ads, and you may even
find that your computer is crashing more than it used to.
But the big caveat is that all of these things

(19:34):
can be caused by things that aren't malware, and there
is no guarantee that malware on your computer will cause
those things. So generally, the less the less well written
that malware is the more of those things that you're
likely to see. There are particular types of malware like
cryptomnors which tried to mind cryptocurrency, which use lots of resources,

(19:55):
so they might make your computer run hot or run slowly.
But the really bad stuff I said earlier about the
malware that steals things from you, that's really really good
at staying hidden and it doesn't leave obvious signs like
using lots of resources or crashing your computer. These computer programs,
these malicious programs, are quite mature and they're very good

(20:16):
at staying hidden. So my advice is, actually, even though
those things might be a sign that you've got malware infection,
don't try reading the signs.

Speaker 4 (20:25):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (20:25):
The most reliable sign of an infection on one of
your devices, by far is your antivirus software telling you
it's found in infection.

Speaker 4 (20:35):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (20:35):
It's a bit like trying to read the signs is
a bit like going around your house and looking at
the books in your bookcase and seeing if they're still
in the same order, and then trying to work out
if you've got a burglar based on that. You know,
it's much better if you've got CCTV. You know, the camera,
the alarm, and all the.

Speaker 6 (20:54):
Rest of it.

Speaker 5 (20:54):
Do that for your computer, it's a much much more
reliable way of telling if you've got a malware infection.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, I mean it makes sense. And so if you're
writing good malware, you don't want it to be detected
by the naked eye because that would defeat the whole
purpose of it. Right, So, I mean, exactly some of
the lazy malware probably is. But I guess the other
question is how are we getting malware on our systems?
Like where is it coming from?

Speaker 5 (21:16):
Because a great question. So you can get malware. It
could be sent to you in email disguised as an invoice.
You might accidentally download it from a website pretending to
be a vendor that you trust. So you know, maybe
you're looking for an app for your phone, or you're
looking for a program for your laptop, and you go
and do a Google search for it. Maybe that the

(21:37):
search results that the search ads have been hijacked by
a malware vendor and they try.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
And get you to download it that way. It could
be that they.

Speaker 5 (21:47):
Exploit a vulnerability in a computer program that you've got.
So perhaps you know your web browser is out there
looking at websites all day. If there is a flaw
in the way that that web browser has been coded,
sometimes it's possible for cyber criminals to exploit that flaw
and make the web browser do something it's not supposed
to do, such as running malicious code or downloading malicious code.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
So I've heard these terms, like, you know, viruses, worms, trojans,
is a virus, malware? And what are the differences with
those two things, or or those various things, I should say.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
So all of those things are types of malicious software.
So malicious software is just a very big broad term
meaning bad software, okay. And a virus is a bit
of malware that hides inside another program. A worm is
a bit of malware that spreads itself, It replicates across
a network. I don't know if you remember want to
cry back in twenty seventeen that very famously that was

(22:43):
a worm that spread around the world in a few hours.
And a trojan is a bit of malware that comes
disguised as normally as a kind of legitimate program. But
the distinctions between them I don't think are actually all
that helpful for India users, because what we see a
lot of these days is that a lot of sorts

(23:05):
of malware will actually download other malware, so it will
try very hard. Whatever you end up with on your system,
it'll probably have some provision for bringing another bit of
malware in, depending on what kind of system you have.
So it could be that you know you have or
you have a chain of malicious software, chain of malicious events,
so you know, one type of malware might lead to

(23:27):
another type of malware might lead to another type of malware,
So you could end up with all of these things.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Oh wow, that's interesting, a lot of a chain reaction effect.
So are we talking just desktop computers at risk or
are you know, Android phones, our iOS devices? I mean,
I know iOS is traditionally pretty secure, but can this
stuff happen on these various platforms or what?

Speaker 5 (23:49):
So any computer, any computer can run malicious software. With
some types of devices, it's harder than others. So everybody
is probably aware that the Windows is the most prominent
target for malware because it's so widely used inside businesses.

Speaker 4 (24:07):
But you can get malware for your Mac.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
There's nothing about your Mac that makes it better at
preventing malware, particularly, so you can get malware for your
Mac you can get malware for your Android phone, you
can get malware for your Chromebook, you can even get
malware for your iOS device. Now with iOS device is
what we see is it's a very very locked down system.
So the malware there tends to be very expensive, but

(24:31):
very very good at what it does. So that's much
more of a threat for high value targets. So if
you're a politician and somebody's prepared to spend you know,
a million dollars on infecting your phone, then that's possible.
And because iOS is so locked down, you can't run
antivirus scanners on it, so if you do get something
bad on your iPhone, there's almost nothing you can do

(24:52):
about it. It would be practically impossible for you to detect.
So most people won't have to worry about that.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
But it's interesting because some many people use the iPhone.
Like you said, Windows are so prominent on the desktop side,
iOS is so prominent on the you know, the mobile side,
and there's so many pop ups that people get on
their mobile devices that are I guess fed through ads
or websites or whatever that say, hey, your device is infected,
and they end up downloading something or you know, clicking

(25:19):
a link that is supposedly going to help them, but
actually that's that's nefarious too.

Speaker 5 (25:25):
Yeah, I think generally, if ever you find yourself faced
with a pop up saying here's the thing that's really
good for your computer, that's probably not how you should
be getting security software. Like, don't don't wait for someone
to tell you go and seek out security software from
a reputable vendor, because the pop ups are I was

(25:46):
gonna say, they're always bad news, but they're not necessarily
always bad news. But it is a technique used by
malware authors. So some malware authors will actually tell you
you go to a website and they'll trigger a pop
up that says your browser needs an update, download the
update here, and then actually what you're downloading is a trojan.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
So tell me about malware bites. I've heard of this
software forever. It's been around for a very long time.
What do you make and you know what is it
good for?

Speaker 5 (26:16):
So malware bites is excellent at discovering malware on your devices.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
So you're right, malware bites has been around a long time.

Speaker 5 (26:23):
Obviously the technology has evolved massively over that period of time.
We make security software for Windows for Mac, for Android. Basically,
any system that can get a malware infection that you'll find,
malware bites has got something that can help you. We
also provide a web browser plug in that can help

(26:45):
you with malicious websites, and we've just released identity theft
protection software as well, because that's a really important threat
these days.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
We're talking about phones. There's lots and.

Speaker 5 (26:55):
Lots of people these days who, like the kids, are
using phones in very differently than the way that you
or I might use laptops or desktop computers, and they
don't have as much data stored on there, and the
big threat to them is actually to their identity, that
their identity is going to get stolen, that someone's going
to pretend to be them and use that as a

(27:15):
way of making money. So identity theft is a real problem,
and also we've just released a specialist software to help
you with that. Because as ever, you know, the threats
don't stand still, they evolve over time.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
And explain quickly the difference. Like I know that malware
bites has for a long time had a free version
of what they do. What's the difference between the free
and a paid version? Like can I just start with
the free and be protected.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
No, please don't do that.

Speaker 5 (27:44):
So the free scanner there is to tell you if
you've got malware on your system, which is a very
useful thing to know. If you find yourself in this
situation that we were describing at the beginning. You know
your computer is running slowly or it's crashing very often.
You might want to run the free scanner to discover
if you've got malware on your system, but you know
the burglar is already in your house.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
At that point.

Speaker 5 (28:08):
Much better is to get the actual antivirus software, which
sits on your computer all the time as a kind
of guardian angel. And what it's doing is every time
your computer does something, it's kind of checking over your
shoulder and going right, is there any malware involved in
what you've just done? Have we seen anything? Have we
detected anything that we have seen before? Or is this

(28:30):
behaving in a way that looks like malware even if
we've never seen it before. Is this doing something that
looks suspicious? So it's obviously it's like in your home,
you know, it's much better to fit the locks to
your door and to your windows, and to fit the
CCTV and stop that burglar getting in in the first place,
than to try and detect if they're already in your house.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Understandable. Mark Stockley, Senior threat intelligence researcher at Malware Bites.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I think we've
got a lot of information about how this stuff gets
on our systems and how to avoid it. Appreciate it all, right,
y much.

Speaker 7 (29:05):
For having me.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Coming up next, Triple eight Rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
I'm going to talk about Super Mario Brothers. Wonder why
I'm loving this game so much. Welcome back to rich
on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology.

(29:28):
Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. The website is
richon Tech dot tv. You can also email me right there,
and you can find me on social media at rich
on Tech. Let's go to Melody in Carlsbad. Melody You're

(29:48):
on with rich.

Speaker 8 (29:50):
Hi Rich Listen about oh, probably nine months ago, I
received a noticed from the post office that I had
a registered letter. I went there and the registered letter
was from geek Squad telling me that I needed to
renew my account. Well, I thought that was really odd

(30:13):
that they anybody would be sending me a registered letter.
I thought it was a scam. I checked it out,
and of course it was a scam, so I did
nothing with it. Then, about a month ago, I got
an email from the geek Squad saying I needed alerting

(30:34):
me that my account was going to expire and I
needed to renew it. Well, I ignored that because I
knew the Geek Squad that it was a scam. I
don't have an account with geek Squad. I've never done
any business with Geek Squad, so then I ignored the email.

(30:57):
A few days ago, I get an email from an
unknown person advising me that my account has been restored
or renewed and for a charge of I think it
was like two hundred bucks one ninety nine. Well, I

(31:22):
I didn't do anything, you know, I haven't taken any
action on that. But I'm wondering what do I do? Yeah,
the only thing I can think of is to keep
monitoring my credit card accounts. But I can't, you know,
unless they have I don't know if they have any

(31:42):
of my credit card information.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Okay, this is I'm glad you brought this up melody,
because this is happening a lot, a lot, a lot,
and it is I'm seeing two of the major scams
out there. One involves a geek Squad, the other involves
Norton Anti virus. And so it happens exactly like you're saying.
You get an email that says, here's an invoice for

(32:06):
your geek Squad service renewal, and it's some ungodly amount,
you know, three hundred ninety eight dollars for the year,
two hundred ninety eight dollars, whatever it is. And it
says this will be charged, you know, in the next
week unless you call this number. And so you call
this number. I'm actually looking at one right now. Okay,

(32:27):
says geek Squad protect your tech. It's time for renewal
order ID product geek Squad five year personal home membership
customer information that has all your data on there, including
your name and your email address, and it says we're
ready to help whenever you need us, call us at
this phone number. And so what's happening is they want
you to see this email and say, wait a second,

(32:50):
I didn't subscribe to geek Squad. And you call that
number and that's when the actual scam takes place, because
you think that you're confirming your credit card number or
getting this charge reversed, and they're actually collecting that information
from you. This has nothing to do with the Geek Squad.
They're just using the Geek Squad's good name to get
your information and to try to charge you. So, Melody,

(33:13):
I know this is happening to you, and you're getting
these letters in the mail and these emails, and you know,
could even be a phone call. But the best thing
you can do is, like you said, monitor your credit
card for any real charges that may come about, which
there's probably not going to be any, and just keep
deleting these emails, don't don't unsubscribe to them, don't call

(33:34):
the phone number that's inside these emails. This is something
that I'm seeing on a daily basis. I'm getting these
emails and so it's coming. Like I said, the Geek
Squad and Norton are two of the biggest because those
are two of the biggest brand names out there. So
that's what's happening, Melody, you could safely ignore them. I'm
glad you brought it up so that people can't avoid this.
Thanks so much for the call today, triple A Rich

(33:56):
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. Mark is in one Netca, California. Mark,
you're on with Rich?

Speaker 9 (34:05):
Well, good aftern answer. I generally speaking, I'm always researching
and looking at different things, and I may go to
a website I don't have time to look at at
that point of time, so I'll drag down one of
the urals to the desktop. I have so many things
on my desktop here, but I pulled down a couple
of articles or stories from Twitter months ago, and I

(34:28):
pulled it down to the desktop so I could go
back to it later. And now I can't get rid
of them. They won't delete. They won't even move off
of the position that they're in. I might be able
to move around a little bit, but it will not delete.
It will not allow me to watch it and then
get rid of it. And it's bad enough with YouTube
not let me on talking about malware bytes. They won't

(34:51):
even allow mailware bytes. So I'm kind of at.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
A what kind of computer is this laptop?

Speaker 9 (34:58):
That's you know, Windows?

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Okay, so Windows? So on a Windows computer? The best
way to delete these things? Obviously, you can drag them
to the trash can. If it's a you know, if
it's a quick shortcut to a URL or any icon
that's on your desktop. The main ways to delete these
things are to drag them to the trash so you
can just pick one up and drag it to the trash.
And of course I assume you've tried to do that,

(35:21):
because you're saying that this is not working. So the
second way to try to get rid of these URLs
on your desktop is to select one and then press
shift and the delete key at the same time. So
shift and delete to get rid of this. And it
says I'm trying this right now. It says, are you
sure you want to permanently delete this item? I press yes,
and my computer is saying access denied. And so this

(35:44):
may be what you're coming up against. You may need
to log in as an administrator to do this, because
sometimes it does try to protect you from certain operations
on your computer that could have negative effects. And so
if you are not the owner of that computer, or
if you're on like a guest account, you're not the administrator,
you may have to do that. If that's not working

(36:05):
for you, you may want to try restarting your computer and
then doing it, because sometimes these things are a little
bit stickier than they should be and a good restart
will help that. But try the shift delete. I think
that'll really help. Mark and let me know. Email me
on the website. Richon Tech dot tv coming up more
of your calls. Plus we'll talk Mario, the latest game

(36:25):
that everyone loves, including myself. This is rich on Tech.
What's going on? Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Hope you're
having a fantastic day. Phone lines are open at triple
eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four
to two four one zero one is the phone number.

(36:48):
We're going to talk about Cruise pausing its driverless car operations.
We're going to talk about phishing and malware. A new
report says that this stuff is up. So if you
think that it can't happened to you, think again, it
can and it will. We're gonna talk about Mario. It's
a fun new game, Super Mario. Brothers wonder this is

(37:09):
a great game. My brother actually texted we've got a
little group chat with a family, and my brother posted
a picture of his Nintendo switch and I said, let
me guess, you must be playing Super Mario Brothers. Wonder
He said, yeah, how'd you know, I said, because everyone's
playing it. This is such a fun game. My name
is rich Demiro. You're listening to rich on Tech website,
rich on Tech dot TV, and of course online at

(37:34):
rich on Tech. That's a lot of rich on Tech.
So let me tell you about this Nintendo game. This
is the first two D side scrolling Mario Brothers game
in over ten years. This launched for the Nintendo Switch.
Mentioned it on the show last weekend, but I hadn't
had a chance to play it just yet, and boy,
when I got a chance to play, it was fun.
My nine year old and I were fighting over who

(37:56):
got to play next because it was just It's one
of those games that you pick up and there's almost
no learning curve, right, you just know how to play
it instinctively. So if you played the original Mario Brothers,
or if you're looking for a gift this holiday season,
or I don't know, I just have a feeling that
over the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all throughout, you know,
through the end of the year, no matter what you're celebrating,

(38:19):
people are going to be getting this as a gift.
The kids are gonna start playing it, and the parents
or the adults are going to, wait a second, I
want to play that because it just looks fun and
it looks easy. I don't know if you've tried to
play one of these video games these days, but you know,
there's like fifteen different controller settings, fifteen different buttons on
that thing. And it's not for the faint of heart.
Like you need to know how to play video games

(38:39):
for most of today's games, this one you do not.
It's got fun power ups like elephant fruit, which turns
Mario into an elephant with like a horn or what
do they call it, not a horn, elephant nose, like
a long elephant nose, a trunk, Thank you, Bobo. Then
they've got these wonder flowers that trigger effects.

Speaker 7 (38:57):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
I don't know what these designers over in Japan were
we're enjoying while they made this game, but those wonderflowers
are a little you know, I guess all video games
are kind of weird like that, right. There's up to
four players locally and twelve players online, so that's kind
of fun. The game is sixty dollars and This is gosh,

(39:18):
it's been thirty years since the launch of the original
Super Mario Brothers game on nes want to date yourself.
There you go, thirty years. So again, Super Mario Brothers.
Wonder if you're looking for a gift this holiday season,
I'm telling you this is the one to get. Kids
will love it, adults will love it, and I think
you're gonna have fun play in this game, So I
am that's for sure. Cruz this is the driverless taxi service.

(39:43):
This is the company owned by GM General Motors. They
have operations in I know it's in San Francisco. I
believe it's in Phoenix and also Austin, and so Cruz
has paused its driverless car operations after this issue they
had in California, and the issue was a pedestrian was

(40:05):
hit by a human driver and thrown into the path
of one of these autonomous cruise cars. So the car
did not actually well, it ended up hitting the person,
but the car or the person was originally hit by
a human driver and that human driver fled the scene,
by the way, so they're still looking for that driver.
But what happened was the human hit the person in

(40:28):
the crosswalk. The person was thrown into the path of
this Cruise driverless car, the driverless car, and this is
kind of the sad part is it kind of dragged
the person a couple of feet while trying to pull over,
and I know, it's just like thinking about this is like,
oh gosh. Now where the trouble started is apparently Cruise

(40:53):
did not exactly tell the DMV everything they knew about
this accident. And I guess there was some videotape that
they didn't show until they were asked, like, hey, where's
this tape, And so that's where the issue lies. I mean, look,
these self driving cars are learning, and Cruise is arguing that, look,
you know, there are things that could have done better.
But at the same time, the issue with the DMV

(41:16):
stem from the fact that Cruz was not one hundred
percent forthcoming about everything it knew about this accident. And
so the DMV immediately suspended their license for doing these
self driving cars in California, and Cruise to took it
a step further after that and said, you know what,
We're going to pause a little bit here. We're going
to stop our self driving cars everywhere in all of

(41:36):
our markets, just to kind of rethink, refocus, and figure
out what went wrong here and how we can make
sure this never can happen again. Now, I think at
the end of the day, the human is still the
most at fault here because the human hit the other
human and drove off, and they did it on purpose
because they're probably scared. Who knows, they could have been drinking.
Who knows what happened there. But you know, it's just

(41:59):
one of these situations where no matter how you slice it,
it is not good. And you could say, Okay, well,
we should never have driverless cars, we should never have
self driving cars. I don't think that's going to be
the reality in the future. No matter what, we are
going to have self driving cars. It's going to be
a part of our lives. And I think in many cases,
these self driving cars are probably safer than human drivers.

(42:21):
Humans are human. They get behind the wheel after drinking,
after taking drugs, after you know, they don't feel right mentally, physically.
There are so many things that can happen with a car.
A car is a piece of machinery and we're just human.
We're just operating this machinery, and so many things can
go wrong. And I'm not saying the driverless cars are perfect.

(42:41):
They're just software and machinery and they're still learning and
they're still figuring out. But I think the reaction times
are quicker, the way that they react to things are
probably better in many ways than humans can do it.
But again, this is all evolving. Humans have been driving
for a long time, driverless cars not so much. So.
At the end of the day, Cruise pausing operations in

(43:02):
all of its markets. Waimo still operates here in Los
Angeles and in other cities, and I think it's not
the last time we're gonna hear about stuff like this.
These driverless cars are becoming a bigger and bigger force
because why, money is at stake. There's money to be made,
there's efficiencies, and there's a lot of money backing these
driverless car operations. So again, very sad what happened in

(43:26):
this specific instance, but I think Cruise is doing the
right thing by saying, you know, let's pause for a
little bit, let's figure out what's going to happen in
the future with these kind of events, and let's make
sure that never happens again. The car should have just
come to a complete stop, right if you have a
human that's stuck underneath your car, you don't keep moving.
And the car didn't do that. It moved because it

(43:47):
was programmed to do that. It was programmed to do
a procedure where it would pull over until it was safe.
In fact, in California, I guess there are laws that
say you have to pull over after an accident, you know,
to ensure the safe of other people, but not when
that puts a human at risk. So we'll continue to
watch that story see what happens with that. Let's talk

(44:09):
more about phishing and malware, because we had a guest
earlier on the show talking about malware, how to identify it,
how to avoid it. But this is a report from
vade secure. I guess, of course they probably try to
keep people safe from malware and phishing. Q three twenty
twenty three, phishing volumes increased one hundred and seventy three
percent compared to previous quarter. Four hundred and ninety three

(44:31):
million emails were phishing. Malware volume increased one hundred and
ten percent quarter over quarter, hitting one hundred and twenty
five million emails. August the most active month for phishing,
two hundred and seven million fishing emails were sent September
highest for malware forty five million malware threats. Top impersonated brands.

(44:52):
If you get an email from Facebook or Microsoft, be
on guard. Those are the two most impersonated brands. We
talked about geek Squad earlier. Why do they impersonate these
brands because they're popular. A lot of people get legitimate
emails from Microsoft and Facebook on a daily basis, So
these scammers try to mix in a few that are
fake and they catch you off guard. And so when

(45:13):
Facebook says, hey, did you just log in on this
on this device from Croatia and you go no, and okay,
here click here to fix that, and you click there,
you log in without thinking, and now you've just been hacked.
Let's see, financial services saw the most phishing URLs, while
government fishing increased almost three hundred percent. Number one impersonator

(45:34):
for phishing URLs Bank of America. That's what they're impersonating
the most. Why because Bank of America is a huge bank,
one of the top banks here in the US, if
not the top bank. Phishing URLs impersonating Bank of America
jumped eight hundred and seventy three percent quarter over quarter.
Let's see what else Microsoft three sixty five key phishing

(45:56):
target and the new way they're fishing is with QR codes.
They send you a QR code through your email and say, hey,
log in securely by scanning this code with your phone.
And you may be saying, rich, why would I ever
do that? Come on, this is like a no brainer.
Help people do it. And again it's all about catching
you off guard, because what do you have to do
in real life? You have to scan sometimes a QR

(46:18):
code to do something. Instagram copyright infringement scams continue to
target users. I get these probably on a daily basis. Hey,
your piece of content on Instagram it's illegal, it's copyright infringement.
Click this link to verify your account, make sure everything's okay.
And again people get those. I've gotten those for real

(46:39):
where it says the music you used in your Instagram
reel is copyrighted. We are going to take down that
piece of content or we're going to mute the music.
And so again, all of these phishing and malware things
they play, they put a twist on something we know
to be real, and that's how they get you. Email
continues to be the top initial infection vector for phishing

(47:00):
and malware. So beyond guard when you're on email, use
a program that helps kind of scan your email for
viruses and malware and all this stuff. But at the
end of the day, you are your best line of defense.
You get an email that seems too good to be true,
don't click it. You get a warning that they're gonna stop,

(47:21):
you know, I mean, you see it for everything. We're
gonna turn off your electricity, We're gonna the car warranty
on your on your car is gonna stop. Your Instagram
account is gonna be deactivated. Your Facebook account is gonna
be deactivated. Your bank account is going to be closed.
No one is closing these accounts by emailing you. I
can tell you that right now. Nobody is closing your

(47:43):
accounts by emailing you. When there is actually an issue,
and there's actually a problem, you will know for real.
They will send a message to your phone, they will
send you a notification. And ninety nine percent of the
time Facebook is not sitting there closing accounts, and when
they do, you'll know it. So just be aware. Again,
Phishing email activity is up, and it's because we're human.

(48:07):
We click these things and so you just have to
really be on guard about what you're clicking, what you're doing.
I can look at my inbox right now and see
a whole bunch of stuff that I'm just like, what
is this? Just be on guard, all right. Coming up next,
more of your calls at triple eight rich one O
one eight eight eight seven four to two four to
one zero one. We got emails too from richontech dot TV.

(48:30):
There's a email contact button you could send them there.
I'll read one of those coming up next. My name
is rich dmiro and you are listening to rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich on tech dot
tv is the website. If you want to contact the show,
send your email there or call in eighty eight rich

(48:52):
one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. Mike rode In on the website.
I have a set of bows Q forty five quiet
comfort noise canceling headphones. I'm having connectivity issues with my
Samsung S ten smartphone. I'm trying to connect with Bluetooth.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. On my phone.

(49:13):
All my echo dots show up in the list, even
my TV, but not my headphones. Last night it played
somehow even though it never came up in the list.
Out of curiosity, I closed all the apps and it
was still playing help me Please in bold letters, Mike,
I think you need to do what's called a network
settings reset on this Samsung Galaxy S ten smartphone. It's

(49:36):
it's an older phone, so you've probably connected things over
the years to it, and something just doesn't seem to
be playing right. So what I'd recommend is doing what's
called a network settings reset. So you want to go
into your Samsung phone. You want to go into your
settings and let me get my phone here, so I
can do this with you. Y swipe down from the top.

(49:56):
There's a little gear icon in the upper right hand corner.
You tap that and then you'll be into your settings.
Now you scroll all the way down until it says
general Management, and then you scroll all the way down
again until it says reset.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Now.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I know it's scary because it says reset, so you
probably didn't want to click that, but you can tap
reset and then you get a bunch of reset options
reset all settings, reset network settings, reset accessibility settings, and
the one that you probably don't want to do is
factory data reset, So factory data reset means this will
bring your phone back to factory fresh finish. But if

(50:35):
you're having problems with your phone and you want to
reset something, maybe you change the setting and you just
can't remember which setting it was and it's just annoying you.
You can tap reset all Settings and it'll bring all settings, security,
language accounts, personal data, settings for download apps. That will
bring it all back to factory. Or you can do
reset Network settings and that will reset the Wi Fi,

(50:59):
the mobile data, and Bluetooth. That's the one I think
you should tap. And so once you tap that, it
will clear out all the Bluetooth devices, all the Wi
Fi devices, all the connected devices on that phone. Then
I would go in and I would repair the Bow's headphones,
and I think your connectivity issues will hopefully be solved.
Let's go to Mary Jane, Mary Jane, Mary Gene in Fallbrook, California.

(51:25):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (51:26):
Oh, thank you so much for taking my call. I
have an old Apple six. It wasn't holding I loved it,
it wasn't holding a charge anymore. So I went to
your sponsor and I bought a new phone, and Wise,
the gentleman was transferring the information from one phone to

(51:46):
the other. He says, what's your security code number? I
don't know what he was talking about, don't I went
through some papers. I don't see anything in regard to that.
I wondered, what do I do now? Both phones are
inoperable and I don't know what security code it's not. Well,

(52:08):
I'm confused. I just don't know what to do.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Okay, So explain to me. You have an iPhone six?
That's your phone? Are they both in your possession?

Speaker 7 (52:17):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Okay? And you have a new iPhone. What did you
get a new iPhone?

Speaker 7 (52:21):
Yeah? I just got a fifty. I got a new.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
iPhone yet a fifteen.

Speaker 7 (52:27):
I think they called it a fifty.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Okay, Well the newest is a fifteen? Is the fifteen?
So is it an iPhone?

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Okay? Great? So, and you're trying to transfer? Now who
are you talking to that's asking for the code?

Speaker 7 (52:39):
I was talking to your sponsor. I went into their
store and the young man with uh am I allowed
to say the name. Sure, I'm not sure the sponsors
Consumer Cellular?

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Oh, Consumer selluar okay, got it? Okay, So all right,
so I think what you're referring to a security code
on your phone. So iPhone is very easy to to.
You're trying to transfer all your data from the old
phone to the new one.

Speaker 7 (53:08):
Well that's when he pros in. So that wasn't completed
and I'm out two phones.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Okay, do you have both phones in your possession?

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Okay, great, So what you want to do? The security
code that I believe is being referred to is your
pin code, so you know how you yes, the code
that you use to unlock your old phone. When you
go through the setup process on the iPhone to transfer
your data for security reasons, it asks you what the
pin code is on your old phone, and so you

(53:39):
type that in and that enables the phone to decode
your encrypted information off the old device. And so that's
what I believe is happening here. That is the code.
So whatever you type in and don't don't say it
on air, but whatever you type in on your old phone,
that's what you do. That's the code that you put
in on the new phone. So typically throughout the little
process of transferring all the data, it will say, please

(54:03):
enter the security code or the pin code from your
your previous device, and so that's the code. That you
type in and that will help the new phone gather
the old data. So that's what I believe you could do.
If you're already trying to do this yourself, what you
want to do is just on the iPhone, the new iPhone,
just start the process over. There's usually a way you

(54:24):
can just keep pressing the back button on the iPhone.
Just do it yourself. Hold both phones next to each other,
make sure they're both charged up, have the old phone
on and ready, and your new phone will recognize that
your old phone is right next to it. It will say, hey,
do you want to copy over all your information? And
you say yes, and then at some point in that process,
it will ask you for that pin code or that

(54:45):
security code from your old phone. So Mary Gene, thanks
so much for calling today. I hope that that helps
you figure it out. All right, triple eight rich one
one eight eight eight seven four to two four one
zero one. We've got to couple of lines open if
you want to get those calls in. We're also going
to talk about uh oh, this is really neat. Google

(55:05):
has a new way to help you create AI images.
It's pretty slick. I'll tell you all about it coming
up right after this. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hang out with you talking technology. Email
is open at richontech dot. TV Phone lines are open

(55:27):
triple eight Rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. Let's go to
Edwin in the Lucern Valley, California. Edwin, you're on with
rich Oh Rich.

Speaker 7 (55:41):
Yah.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, I'm a HAM operator and I'm trying to go
from my phone. I don't want to use my phone anymore.
I want to use my computer. It's a Dell computer
and I want to use it for EchoLink and I've
got it all set up and everything, and uh uh

(56:03):
every time I get a microphone, just the microphone itself
is all I want. It will mute my uh sound
on my monitor. I went yesterday and called uh Dell
and talked to them, and they're supposed to be sending

(56:24):
out a microphone. You have any any ideas, uh what
I could use as for a microphone. It's gonna be broadcasting,
uh from my computer to whatever repeater I log into.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Okay, so you just you basically just want to a
decent USB microphone that you can plug into your computer
to broadcast from Yes, okay, I mean a couple of
ways you could do this. I mean, there's so many microphones,
but I'd recommend a you know, a USB mic obviously,
and if it's HAM radio, I mean, I'm not at

(57:01):
the quality. I'm not too sure of what you know,
what high quality you need for that. But I think
that any of these mics that are the Bluetooth mics
that you get online would work just fine. I mean,
YETI is a big brand that a lot of people like.
I'm actually testing a brand that I absolutely love and
I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember what the name is,

(57:22):
but oh my gosh, I gotta get this. It's like
an Australian brand. It's like an Austrian There's also a
mic I really like called Tula t U La Tula mic.
But I think any of the yeties are probably gonna
be fine. I would also check what Wirecutter recommends for
like just a basic you know, I would probably just
think a podcast mike would be fine for you. Let's

(57:45):
see what they say with the Okay, yep, YETI is
their top pick, the blue Yetti Oh Amazon, how about
this Edwin Amazon Basics Desktop Mini condenser microphone. How much
is this? Oh it's unavailable, darn it. That would have
been a great one. Amazon Basics is probably like, you know,

(58:05):
twenty bucks for a mic. Okay, you've got blue Snowball
USB MIC that's a good one for fifty bucks. The
blue Yetti is about one hundred dollars. They've got a
Razor MIC that is forty dollars. I mean, these are
these are some solid options, and I think any of
these are going to be fine. And the good news
is once you get this you could test it out.
I don't think the quality of any of these, I

(58:29):
think is going to be perfect for what you're doing.
So now you said Dell was going to send you
a MIC. I'm not sure why they're sending you one
if you're going to buy one. But that's what I
would do, is just get a USB MIC. I think
that you don't even need a MIC that plugs into
the jack on the computer. I think USB would probably
be better. So again, those are the brands I think,
YETI is probably the biggest brand that people use out
there for these kind of us by they kind of

(58:50):
invented the genre there, So a good question ed when
in hopefully can hear. I don't. I don't have any
experience with Ham radio. I get so many emails from
like Ham radio operators. I think. I think the last
time I did anything like that was when I was
a kid. I think they had like this set that
I got. It was like a cardboard box with like
radio in it. But I don't. I don't know anything
about that world. I should probably do a story on

(59:11):
it so I can learn more. Thanks for the call today,
triple eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one. I really wish
I could find this mic that I've been using. I
gotta I should write it down. I'll talk about it
on a future show, because I really I've I get
sent a lot of microphones to try out. This one
was really really good, like the quality. It just sounded

(59:32):
so rich.

Speaker 7 (59:34):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Let's tell you about this. Google has a new way
to create AI images. So this is part of their
new generative search experiment. So you have to be opted
into Google's generative search, and if you're not, I would
say try it because it's really cool. So every search
I do on Google, I get like a little AI
synopsis at the top of what I'm searching about, and

(59:56):
it's it's pretty handy. So if you want to try
this out, you go to lab dot Google Labs dot
Google and you can opt into what's called their Search
Generative Experience. This is all of the new stuff that
Google's doing with Search in AI. So if you want
to try this, once you're opted in, you can go
to the search bar on Google or directly to the tool.

(01:00:19):
So to try this in search again once you're opted in,
don't just try this and say rich it's not working.
You have to be opted in. All you have to
do is type the word draw or sketch and then
whatever you want to see. So let's say draw a
bear eating bear on Mars eating honey, and I type
that in and it says generating right at the top,

(01:00:40):
you know where you'd see the typical images on Google. Well,
now it says generative AI is experimental, and it gives
me four images that Google literally made on the fly
of a bear eating honey on Mars, and it's pretty neat.
You can also say sketch, So if you want to
say sketch a dream sports car with you know, I

(01:01:01):
don't know, whatever you want. This is the beauty of
this stuff is that your your creativity is the limit.
There's literally no limit. Let's say sketch a dream car
that is made of candy, and let's see what it
looks like. So it's gonna sketch this car in real time.

(01:01:23):
It's generating right now. There it is. I see interesting.
It went with kind of a classic looking car, which
I wouldn't think a dream car would be. But one
of these cars has like you know all I mean this.
The second image it generated is super cool, a sketch
of a lollipop shaped race car with a gumball body,
a gummy bear interior, and a candy cane steering wheel.

(01:01:46):
It actually tells you what the AI thought of when
it made this image. Bobo's coming in. He wants to
see what this image looks like. It looks like a
car that you might have on candy Land. So it's
pretty good. And you can edit these images again, you
can export them, you can download them, you can save
them to your Google drive. This is really fun. Now.

(01:02:07):
There are many many aiimage generators out there. Many of
them require a sign up, many of them are limited.
Some of them give you only a couple of free images.
And then they charge you for more. This is all
completely free Bobo proofs. So if you want to go
to try this out, go to the website Rich on
tech dot tv. Scroll down it says try Google's free

(01:02:29):
aiimage generator and you can see the I did a
cute little furry monster listening to music and it is
so cute. This is something that would take the people
at Pixar sixteen weeks to generate, and they did it
on Google in about ten seconds. Now, if you want
to go directly to the tool, you can go to
Google dot com slash search slash images, but again you

(01:02:51):
have to be signed up for this, and it shows
all of the recent images from the past thirty days
that I've generated with this tool, and wow, I'm looking
at this. I've generated a lot. I generated a elephant
playing piano. I generated a oh wow, these sports cars
dream sports cars. I did a unicorn eating popcorn. I

(01:03:12):
did a cargo plane flying over I don't know what
that is. I did a person let's see what this
one was. This, Oh, I did cell phone addiction, generated
a bunch of people on their cell phones. So this
is really really fun stuff. Again, Rich on tech dot TV,
if you want to try out Google's free AI image generator.

(01:03:32):
The neat part about this AI image generator compared to
a lot of other ones, is that there's really no
sign up. If you already have a Google account, you
just have to opt in. You can do this on
your mobile phone, and you can do it right from
Google Search. So again, just type in draw or sketch
along with the image that you want. Pretty pretty fun stuff.
Google just continues to amaze me with some of the

(01:03:54):
stuff that it does. Let me tell you real quick,
I've been playing with the Samsung Galaxy twenty three FE.
They sent the phone in purple, and it's pretty nice color.
It's a little blockier and chunkier than the standard Samsung phones.
But the FE models are basically they call them Fan Edition,

(01:04:17):
so they have all the features that you want, but
at a better price point. So this starts at five
hundred ninety nine dollars available now, and it has three lenses.
You've got your Ultra wide, your standard, and your zoom.
Zoom's up to three times. And the pictures I took
today they look pretty good. I'm gonna have to do
some more, you know, taking pictures. Comparing meinst the other phones,
but this is a solid device for five hundred ninety

(01:04:41):
nine dollars. Comes in a bunch of fun colors mint cream, graphite,
and purple. If you order it on Samsung dot com,
they have exclusive colors indigo and tangerine. And it's got
all the stuff that you need. It's got a great display,
it's got long lasting battery life. It is a Samsung
phone through and through. Now they get the FI Edition

(01:05:01):
last year, but people love these FI editions because it's
basically a really inexpensive Samsung device, but with all of
the flagship features. So I'd say check it out. If
you're looking for a Samsung phone, you don't want to
spend twelve hundred dollars on the Ultra and you want
something that's just basic, but it still has all that
Samsung goodness. These phones are going to do it. And

(01:05:22):
actually I like how it's kind of chunky. It's a
little bit thicker, a little bit bigger than the typical
Samsung flagship, the S twenty three, the S twenty three
plus the S twenty three Ultra. This Fi is just
like a little bit bigger, but it still fits in
your hand really nice. So again, it's on sale now.
It starts at five ninety nine if you want to

(01:05:43):
bundle it. By the way, I was talking about, they
have a tablet, an Fi tablet, and also the buds.
They're doing that for nine to ninety nine for all
three of these, so you could walk out with a tablet,
the buds, you know, the earbuds, and the phone all
for nine ninety nine. That's only happening through the thirtieth though,
so you only have a couple of days to take
advantage of that. But Samsung, you know, they're forced to

(01:06:04):
be reckoned with They've got this technology down, They've got
this stuff figured out, so they're you know, they want
to sell phones. And by the way, I actually I
hate to say, I don't recommend buying this phone right now,
but I kind of don't because if history is our guide,
the FI devices are discounted, so throughout the holidays, if
you're looking for a new phone, the FI device will

(01:06:26):
probably be one hundred dollars less minimum. So you're talking
four ninety nine for a Samsung, really good Samsung phone.
So personally i'd probably wait for that. But the deal,
the bundle deal is pretty good for nine h nine
you're geting three things. Phone line open eighty eight rich
one on one eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. We still got lots more of

(01:06:47):
the show, lots more questions, lots more things to talk about.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich
On Tech. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. I
found the microphone I was testing. It's called the me
Creator MI Creator Studio pocket recording System. It's from a

(01:07:12):
company named Austrian Audio, and I gotta say this probably
has one of the best audio qualities. In fact, I
used it to record a segment of this very show
last two weeks ago. And it's a studio microphone with
USBC connection. It's two hundred bucks and it's really good.
It's good for music recording, podcasting, interviews, and it's USBC,

(01:07:36):
so you plug it into your computer and the quality
is just it's it's really really good. Again, the Me
Creator Studio. And that's only if you're doing like a
podcast at home, or if you want really high quality audio.
Otherwise you don't need something that expensive or that high quality.
Let's go to Doreen in Seami Valley Doreen, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 10 (01:07:58):
Yeah, Hi, Rich, I'm having with my neighbor's dog. Actually,
they man and woman live there. They've got two dogs,
but one is quite old and it's barking. Doesn't bother me,
but they it started out kind of as a puppy,
but it's I've been here a year and putting up
with this, this barking, and they bark anywhere from four

(01:08:22):
to six hours every day constant. Well, it's like off
and on. What happened is when the people leave and
go somewhere or whatever, they're alone for two or three
hours and they will bark continuous as long as the
people are gone. When they come back and the barking stops,
there's this sounds like a dog, sounds like yeah, go ahead,

(01:08:44):
Well I got it's an ultrasound. It's called Dog Silencer
Maps and it runs anywhere from seventy to one hundred
and sixty dollars or something, and it's uh, you pointed
to the direction, and it was supposed to work within
three hundred feet. Well, my dining room. I live in

(01:09:04):
an apartment and the dining room, my dining room is
connected to their dining room, you know, with the wall
naturally between its and it's not a very thick wall whatever.
So I just wondered if you knew anything about this
dog silence or whether it works, or if there's any
any other kind of apparatus devices or whatever that might

(01:09:27):
stop the I mean it sounds you know, well it's
a dog, you know, but I mean it's driving me nut.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Yeah, I understand that that's that's very unfortunate to be
in that situation because I mean, dogs are you know,
they're animals. So it's like, clearly there's something going on here.
The dog has some separation, anxiety, whatever it is with
the owner that when they leave, the dog is barking.
Now when it comes to this device, I have not
heard of this device. I mean, obviously it's a it's

(01:09:54):
an ultrasonic it's called the Dog Silencer MAX stops back
barking up to three hundred feet away. They say it's
humane automatic bark detection up to seventy five feet, so
it's not kind of sending out the signal all day.
It's only sending it out when the dog starts barking,
so that activates it. And I'm guessing it's some sort
of ultrasonic sound that the dog does not like, and
that's why the dog, you know, pipes down. I don't

(01:10:18):
like this. I don't like the sound of it. I
feel like Doreen. By using a device like this, you
know there's an underlying issue here, and the issue is twofold.
It's you and your neighbor sound like you've got. You know,
you're either not happy with this neighbor, you may not
know this neighbor, and you know you also don't know
what's happening with this situation with a dog. So this

(01:10:39):
device also. Looking it up on Amazon gets a two
point six out of five. That's pretty bad. It's not
for sale anymore on Amazon. I don't know if it's
just out of stock right now, but I think there's
too many red flags with this. I think that you know,
this is kind of the human touch. I think you
got to go over there and just talk to your
neighbor and explain what's happening, like you did to me,
and just say, look, you know this is driving me nuts.

(01:11:02):
Is there anything we can do? And I think that's
probably the best way to start this thing. I don't
have enough information on it. I'm not sure if it's humane.
I'm not sure if this is something that people do
on a daily basis and use stuff like this against
their neighbor's dogs. But it doesn't feel good to me,
Like I wouldn't want someone doing this to my dog.
It just doesn't feel right, you know, And so I

(01:11:24):
would talk to your neighbor. That's what I think you
need to do. See what the neighbor does. Maybe I
don't know, become friends with the dog. Maybe maybe when
the neighbor leaves the house, you take the dog in
and the dog kind of cuddles up to you and
gets to know you and feels more comfortable being at
the house alone, and you know, now you have a companion.
So I don't know, these are just these are just ideas,
but I would I would say this thing probably sounds

(01:11:45):
too good to be true. If it, you know, if it,
if it worked, it probably have better ratings number one,
and maybe you know, And that's the beauty of this show.
What I love about this show is that people call
in and they email me and they let me know
what they're opinion is on stuff too. So this could
be a very common way for people to keep their
neighbors dogs quiet. I just don't. It's like, I wouldn't

(01:12:07):
want someone to do this to my dog, and so
I don't know. And maybe it's a training method, but
I think I don't know. That's that's a good one.
Thanks for the call. Appreciate it, Doreen. Hopefully you get
that figured out, because it's not something you want. It's
so funny because dog owners are sometimes oblivious to this situation.
They're like, oh, I just left for work, and you know,
the dog is sitting there, you know, crying the whole afternoon.

(01:12:30):
And no one wants that, not even the dog owner.
They don't want that either. Rich on tech dot tv
is the website to go to. By the way, did
you know you can listen to this show as a podcast,
So if you miss an episode you want to tune
in at a different time whatever it is. It's on
the radio obviously, but if you want to listen as
the podcast, you could also do that. So you can

(01:12:52):
go to rich on tech dot tv. Oh, we got
a dog in the studio. Oh my gosh, Okay, let
me try the let me try the silencer. Let's see
if this works already, can you hear it? Okay? The dog?
Oh Wow, dog went away. Oh no, he's back. Dog
is back.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Ugh.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
You know, I hate when that happens. Dog dogs are
oh gosh. I just you know, there's so many things
for like, dogs are just they you know, they're either
well trained or they're not. And people love their pets.
I just I feel like people would be so sad
if someone was using some sort of silencer against their
dog without them knowing. Anyway. The podcast on the website
rich on Tech dot tv all the show notes, so

(01:13:29):
anything I mentioned is in the show notes as well.
My name is rich Damiro. You are listening to rich
on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro
here hanging out with you, talking technology. So I'll have
another hour of the show to go. Lots to talk about.
I'll tell you about new pause ads on your streaming services,

(01:13:52):
what that means, a little tip for opening QR codes
on iOS X, rolling out audio and video calls. And
we've got a great guest coming up later in the show,
Luke Haney, co founder and co director of the Fair
Opportunity Project. They have built an AI tool to help
students get more money for college through financial aid. So

(01:14:15):
you definitely want to hear about that if you have
a student that might be going to school. We got
a couple of calls on the phone eighty eight rich
one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two
four to one zero one. I'll get to that in
a second. I just wanted to read a couple of
the emails we've gotten, Andrew says Andrew, and Semi Valley says.
For the issue of the guy that had trouble with

(01:14:35):
their Bluetooth earbuds, it could be caused by an app
accessing the Bluetooth that doesn't need to. In my case,
my brand new iPhone fourteen Promax kept having a problem
with the Bluetooth AirPods pro cutting out, and it turned
out the Alexa app, but my phone had access to
Bluetooth and that was causing the problem. Simply disabling its
access to Bluetooth might fix the issue. Most apps do

(01:14:57):
not need constant access to Bluetooth and should be disabled
as needed. Yeah, that could be it. So that's something
else you can check. I mean, look, in general, if
an app is using permissions that it doesn't need, definitely
get rid of those because a lot of times these
apps will ask for all kinds of permissions they don't need,

(01:15:17):
like camera location, all that stuff. Just don't give it
to them. You can also revoke the permissions and the
settings too, Craig says rich regarding screening emails before they
get into your outlook or other inbox in your computer.
Our eight person architecture firm has been using the program
below for decades and it is fantastic. They have a
free version, but the yearly charge for the full program

(01:15:38):
is a bargain that provides more features. It's called mail
Washer from a company in Australia. You can get the
free download and the website is fire trust dot com
mailsher pro, so it looks like mail Washer. Release date
August twenty twenty three, so it's up to date. Works
on Windows protection against spam, phishing emails, email virus, his

(01:16:00):
unwanted newsletter's unwanted email. The trial is thirty days and
offers full functionality. If you want to keep using it
after thirty days, you must purchase a license. The license
is good for three computers for one year and it's
twenty five bucks. That's pretty good. So if you have
a small kind of firm, small company, and you just
want to protect everyone at that company that's not bad,

(01:16:21):
and I looked up reviews on mail Washer. It actually
gets pretty good reviews. The con is that the free
version is just for one email account, but the pros
are pretty good. So thanks for that suggestion, Craig appreciate that.
Let's see. ROBERTA writes in says, I have an eighty
six year old neighbor who locked himself out of his iPhone.
He doesn't remember his Apple ID as password or any

(01:16:42):
codes and can't find his receipt. Apple is unable to
help him. Please advise, Well, yeah, yeah, think you can't
remember anything here, You're you're kind of out of luck. There,
doesn't remember his Apple ID password or any codes and
can't find his receipt. I get emails like this on
a daily base. People forget everything. People are just setting

(01:17:03):
up their phones and then immediately forgetting what the information
is that they set up. And I'm guilty of it.
I've done this. I'm not kidding. One time. I got
a review unit from Samsung one time and I set
it up and I literally as soon as I set
up the phone, I forgot what the passcode was. And
I'm not kidding. I didn't come back to the phone
for another week, and I said, Samsung, he has sent

(01:17:25):
me a phone that I can't open. I can't unlock
this thing because as a passcode, And they said, what
are you talking about. We never send phones that have
passcodes on them. They went nuts looking at all their
files trying to figure it out, and finally I was like, oh,
wait a second. I did set up this phone, and
I totally forgot what I set is the passcode, and
I had to reformat the entire phone to get it
back to factory. So ROBERTA, I think that's what your

(01:17:45):
eighty six year old neighbor has to do. If he
forgot his Apple ID, his password, his codes, he's got
to reformat that phone and start fresh. Now. The only
thing he could try to do, I mean, with the
Apple ID, you can type in Apple ID recovery online
and you can go there and figure out if he
can reset his password. Go to iforgot dot Apple dot com.

(01:18:09):
I forgot I F O R G O T dot
Apple dot com, and you can try to reset your
password there. I'm assuming the guy only has one or
two email accounts. I mean, how many emails can he
possibly have? So it's probably one of those accounts, so
reset the email password and then he can get back
into his phone. Let's go to John in more Park, California. John,

(01:18:33):
you're on with Rich Okay, I hope you can hear me.
I hear you a loud and clear John.

Speaker 6 (01:18:39):
I have a question.

Speaker 7 (01:18:40):
I have a friend of mine. He only has one thing.

Speaker 6 (01:18:43):
He has an iPhone.

Speaker 9 (01:18:45):
But I was gonna ask your advice on password managers.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Ah, good question, password managers. I was just talking about
this yesterday with a friend. So if he just has
an iPhone, I think the easiest, simplest password manager is
built right into the iPhone. It's called iCloud keychain, and
if he's using the iPhone, iCloud keychain will generate strong passwords.
If you're using an iPhone, you've probably seen this pop

(01:19:09):
up on your phone where it says it literally puts
like an email or a password in the box, like
it's like this long character and you just have to
tap to accept it. But iCloud keychain, if he's already
using iPhone, I think is going to be the simplest
way to do it. Now, when you're using more devices
than just the iPhone, I think it gets a little
bit more complicated, then I would recommend something like bitwarden,

(01:19:30):
b it wr d n Bitwarden. And what Bitwarden does
is it will generate a password, but you have to
set it all up. You need to create an account,
you need to set it up and make sure that
the iPhone knows that that's what you want to use
to fill on the accounts. That's a good way to go.
If you're a big Google user, a Google Chrome on

(01:19:52):
the iPhone and Google Chrome on the desktop, I would
check out Google password manager, so they have one built in.
You can go to passwords dot Google dot com. And
Google just recently upgraded this password manager so that works
even better on the iPhone. It used to be kind
of not so easy, but now it actually will fill

(01:20:12):
in passwords across all devices on the iPhone. And by
the way, to check out how you're using the password
manager on your iPhone, you go to settings and let's
see you go to passwords and it's going to authorize you,
and then you can see all the passwords that your
iPhone has selected and kept inside there. I've got a

(01:20:33):
list of a couple of them. But then if you
go into password options, now you can specify how you
want to save and also fill passwords on the iPhone.
So on my phone specifically, I've got a couple of
different options. It says iCloud passwords and keychain, that's the default.
You can use Chrome password Manager. You can use a

(01:20:55):
third party app, and now it even looks like Google
has it built into its app as well, but I
think that's the same as the Chrome one. But that's
what you want to do is set up. I personally
always appreciate third party products for everything, but John in
your friend's case, since he's just or they're just using
an iPhone, I think the iCloud key chain is probably
gonna be the easiest. But keep in mind it is

(01:21:17):
linked to your iCloud account, So if you forget your
iCloud password, or if you can't get into your iicloud account,
you're gonna have a lot of problems with all your
other passwords because you're not gonna be able to get
into those either. So no matter what, no matter what
you use for your password management, please create a secure
password for that software and also write it down if
you need to, you know, just so you don't forget it.

(01:21:39):
Put it somewhere safe. The other programs I like are
dash Lane. So dash Lane's really good. I think it's
it's one of the better password management programs. The problem
is it is expensive. It's very very expensive, especially over time.
So you have to be kind of you know, you
got to be if you're gonna get into that one.
It's gonna cost you some money over time. The other

(01:22:00):
one I like is proton Pass. Proton Pass is an
open source password manager app, and again it does cost
some money for I think anything over the basic, but
it is it's not that expensive, and so proton Pass
is another one. So to review iCloud Keychain, Google password Manager,

(01:22:21):
Bitwarden if you want something that's completely free and then
if you want to pay, I like dash Lane and
I also like proton Pass. So check those out. John
good friend for helping your pal out there. Carl is
in Alpine, California. Carlett, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 7 (01:22:38):
Hey, Rich, I have a problem. I take videos on
my Samsung Galaxy S twenty one FE five g Okay,
I go into my computer, I download it on my
computer and I cannot open my videos. Now I can
open them. I can send them on Messenger, and I
can send them on WhatsApp, No problem the yep. So

(01:23:01):
what I do is I go and I've tried everything.
Will I go into you know, Open with Movies and
TV photos VLC Media.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Player VLC won't open it?

Speaker 7 (01:23:13):
Right here, I'm gonna try it out.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
What's what's the what is the end of the video?
What's the extension on it?

Speaker 7 (01:23:20):
The number?

Speaker 1 (01:23:21):
No, like it's usually it says like movie dot something?
What's after the dot?

Speaker 7 (01:23:26):
Oh wait a minute, hold on, let me do this again.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Hold on, because here's here's what I think is happening.
I think that you're capturing these videos in a high
efficiency mode. There are some new modes that the phones
are using, notably h G I F and some others
h V E C, there's some there's some various newer
types of video and photo formats that not every computer

(01:23:51):
and every program is compatible with just yet. So I
think that's what's happening with this phone. So what I
would do is I would go into your settings. Do
you know how to go into the cameras settings on
your Samsung?

Speaker 7 (01:24:01):
Oh yeah, I can do it right now.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Okay, you open up your phone, open up camera settings
in the upper left hand corner, and it says advanced
Picture Options. So i'd go to that one first and
where it says high efficiency pictures, make sure that's turned off.

Speaker 7 (01:24:17):
Okay, wait a second, I've actually lost you. I'm in settings.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Okay, it says advanced picture options. Do you see that?

Speaker 7 (01:24:25):
Do I scroll down with that?

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
You might need to.

Speaker 7 (01:24:28):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
So you scroll down and okay, features advanced advanced picture options.
Do you see that?

Speaker 7 (01:24:38):
This is okay, I have advanced features?

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Okay, well at any rate? No, no, okay, so just
just at any rate, Carl. What I think is happening
is that you've got these these photos and videos are
taken in a format that not every program likes because
these phones, like I said, are using some newer formats
for these things, and not every program has caught up

(01:25:02):
to these formats. I'm very surprised that VLC is not
playing it, because that typically plays pretty much any file
format you can imagine under the sun. But again, if
you go into your camera settings, open up your camera,
tap the gear icon upper left hand corner, it says
advanced Picture Options, high Efficiency pictures. You want to turn
that off if you want to take it in a

(01:25:22):
format that every single app will understand, and then same
thing under videos in the camera options it says advanced
Video Options, it says high efficiency videos. Turn that off
and hopefully that should solve your problem. Same thing on
the iPhone, there are high efficiency formats you can switch
off if you're having trouble with your pictures. You're listening
to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich On Tech.

(01:25:49):
Was I on with Carlett on the air?

Speaker 11 (01:25:52):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
Okay? I was given Carlett a little uh. She stayed
after class for a little remedial instruction. I was walking
her through the steps on how to get the videos.
So it turns out that her phone was actually taking
the videos in the proper format, which should work on
her computer, but she was emailing herself the file through AOL,

(01:26:13):
and so I have a feeling that AOL was compressing
or changing that video in some way. So when you're
trying to and it's a problem for a lot of people,
they're trying to get videos from their phone to their computer,
and it's not always easy because how do you do it?
Do you email yourself? That's like the easiest, most default way,
So I would recommend I recommend it to Carlett. She

(01:26:36):
said that she uses WhatsApp and so on all of
these WhatsApp and Telegram, they will allow you to send
things to yourself and it's actually quite good, and so
I would recommend using that as a way if you're
ever thinking, like, if you're ever stumped and you're like, wait,
how do I get this file, this big file to
my computer? You can use WhatsApp, you can use Telegram.

(01:26:58):
You can use those programs to send those files to yourself.
And usually they have like on Telegram, it's got a
special little uh, a little menu called saved messages, so
you can send it that way, And WhatsApp has something similar,
so you can do the same exact thing on WhatsApp.
And I'm trying to see what they call it on WhatsApp.

(01:27:19):
It may be called the same thing. Let's see if
I can open up WhatsApp here, So on WhatsApp, let's
see here. Oh I gotta I gotta back up my
WhatsApp here. Okay, I'll just do that daily. Oh wow,
this is uh, you know, this is okay. So WhatsApp
clearly was not probably set up on my phone because

(01:27:39):
I switch phone so often that it like it's always
asking me to do something new and change something anyway.
That's what I would recommend is just sending this stuff
to yourself through a program like a WhatsApp or a
telegram and have that on your desktop, a lot easier
than emailing yourself. Okay, let me tell you about pause ads,
so get ready for this. Pause ads are now coming

(01:28:03):
to various streaming services, including Hulu, Peacock, and HBO. Max
Variety says that all three of these services have started
showing pause ads that appear when you pause a video.
So these are ads that when you pause the show
you're watching or the movie you're watching, you'll get an
AD that pops up, and that ad will say, hey,

(01:28:24):
you know, while you're pausing, take a look at this now.
Some of the brands, including Sharman, Geico, and Hershey's have
tested these ads, and some of them feature QR codes
that you can scan on your screen so that you
can get more information. But again, this is a new
way to get revenue, and if you're on an AD

(01:28:46):
supported streaming plan like these are growing very fast. They're
looking for ways of making money off of you. And
it's fine. I mean, look, you're you're paying less for
this streaming service, but I'm just telling you this so
you're not thrown off guard the next time you see it.
So pause. Ad Ads on Hulu, Peacock, and HBO Max
have started to show up, according to Variety, so don't
be surprised if you see one, and you know. The

(01:29:07):
beauty of ads is that they're great if it's for
a helpful product that you want. I have nothing, no
problem with ads. I mean, this show is ad supported,
and ads are great. I've been on TV for a
very long time. People get TV for free because of ads,
and ads are great. If they're helpful and interesting, they're awesome.
So don't be scared of them. Don't be afraid of them.

(01:29:28):
You can pay to get rid of them in a
lot of services, but you can also get a lot
of stuff for free if you don't mind them. All right,
this was really cool. Nine to five mac Zach Hall
put out a PSA that said, did you know you
can open QR codes on iOS without scanning the code
from another device? And I'll be quite honest, one hundred
percent honest, I did not know this. I've always used
Google Lens to scan a QR code on my screen

(01:29:50):
if I did not have a secondary device to scan it.
But I did not know that if you're on an
iPhone you can just tap and hold on a QR
code and that we'll scan the code. So if you
want to try this out, I posted a QR code
to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech.
You can screenshot that QR code or save it to
your camera role and then once you're in there, just

(01:30:13):
open up that photo on your camera role, tap a
hold on the QR code and lo and behold it
will open up that QR code. This is game changing.
You no longer need to scan it from a different device.
How much fun? All right? Coming up next, we're going
to talk about AI that can help your student get
financial aid. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome

(01:30:38):
back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology
with you. Oh, paying for college every parent's dream, right,
kids have no idea? Joining me now is uh Lou Caney,
co founder and co director of the Fair Opportunity Project.
They have built a GPT chat bot to help students

(01:31:02):
file fast foot Am I saying that right? It's been
so long since I said that word. And also basically,
get more financial aid. Use AI to your advantage. So Luke,
thanks so much for joining me today.

Speaker 12 (01:31:14):
Rich thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
Okay, so tell me. This is the nonprofit Fair Opportunity Project,
So explain to me what your nonprofit is all about
and what you built.

Speaker 11 (01:31:26):
Yeah, exactly, So, Fair Opportunity Project is all about helping
kids afford and college, but also more broadly think about
their financial future post high school. Because it's one of
those periods where you can take.

Speaker 12 (01:31:36):
On a debt, a lot of debt, really quickly.

Speaker 11 (01:31:39):
And so when we were thinking about how we really
wanted to help out students navigate that when you're eighteen
or nineteen, we thought that, hey, maybe we can build
something using this new technology, large language models to help
students kind of navigate that minefield and maximize their aid.
And as you said, for the parents, it also helps
out the parents.

Speaker 12 (01:31:57):
You might have to co side those loans too.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
This is brilliant. And by the way, so what you
said is, you know, everyone thinks that you take out
all these loans for college and then when you start
making money, it is super easy to pay them back.
That is not the case, Like it is really tough
to pay back twenty thousand, thirty thousand, one hundred thousand
dollars worth of money, no matter how much you're making,

(01:32:20):
because there's other things that your money goes to. So
it sounds easy, and people kind of get caught in
that trap of just all just take out all these loans.
So if you can get you know, the least amount,
you know, whatever, you know, you want to take out
the least amount, obviously, But let's talk about this. So
what is the what is FASTS? I ever remember, I
can't remember what that thing's all about. It's like federal
financial aid or something. Application.

Speaker 11 (01:32:40):
Yeah, so the FAST application is basically a way the
government assesses your like your need in this or your
ability to qualify for these advantageous like funding sources. Kind
of a fun fact is that a lot of the
FAST was used a lot more than just like providing
funding for a four year university. A lot of it's
used in a lot of other ways, especially like in

(01:33:00):
community community colleges or trade programs to also assess need
and so just that's one thing that we like to
say is that you know, the FATA isn't just something
that you should file if you're if you're a student
ting about a four year university. It's also something that
is good to kind of knock out depending on for
a variety of things you might want to do in
the future. And in terms of that, what you're saying

(01:33:21):
earlier about the cost of college getting more expensive and
paying that debt off, Yeah, there's one point five trillion
dollars in student debt right down in the US and
so and you got to remember a lot of that
debts to getting taken out.

Speaker 12 (01:33:32):
When you're eighteen nineteen, you're thinking about the future.

Speaker 11 (01:33:35):
You don't really know, and so basically, anything that we
can do as a nonprofit to help students kind of
navigate that along with their families is really important. And
you know, it's not that there's not a lot of
people trying to do that. Like right now in public
high schools, there's a four hundred and twenty four student
to counselor ratio in American public high schools. And you know,
these counselors are great, they're working really hard, they're pull

(01:33:57):
along hours, they're getting stuff prepared through their summer, through
their bre But from a nonprofit angle, is if there's
a way that we can kind of come in and
help students navigate that and also to spell some of
these myths.

Speaker 12 (01:34:09):
That's something that I think is really worth worth our
time to do.

Speaker 11 (01:34:12):
And again the technology has just become ready that we
can do that in a way that's twenty four to
seven and free to help students and families nowgates. But
I should say, actually kind of interesting is that the
FASTA what is it?

Speaker 12 (01:34:24):
Right?

Speaker 11 (01:34:25):
It's also changing, So it's the biggest change in a
generation of the fastest. So in December, it's a totally
new it's a totally new process and the information is
coming out month by month. But one of the things
that why you really wanted to stand this up in
time for that is just to provide another resource when
a lot of families will need it most, because it

(01:34:45):
is the biggest change of this program we've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
Okay, so how does your chatbot help along this process? Like?
What does it do? Exactly?

Speaker 12 (01:34:54):
Yeah, great question.

Speaker 11 (01:34:55):
So so basically how it works is you got to
chat dot fair Opportunity Project dot org.

Speaker 12 (01:34:59):
We also provid.

Speaker 11 (01:35:00):
Free mentorship and like how to apply to college guide,
So if that's also interesting, you can find that on
our main site. But it's at chat that's our pre
pressure ory and you log in and you can basically
ask questions related to the FACA, and so you can say.

Speaker 12 (01:35:13):
Hey, what is the FATA, how do I apply for this?
How does this work?

Speaker 11 (01:35:16):
And we use opening eyes technology the GPT praise kind
of and we trained it on the fast the information
from last year's FASA. So basically, you as a student
can come in anytime of the day, ask a question
and get an answer back that we've trained to be
really easy to understand.

Speaker 12 (01:35:36):
We try to make those responses in our model.

Speaker 11 (01:35:38):
Be easy enough for someone in middle school to kind
of understand, just because you're right, like, if you go
to the government site, you're kind of waiting through this
long PDF of what to do, and we got to
and if we can help people just answer the question
they have in mind without having to go through one
hundred pages of PDF.

Speaker 12 (01:35:57):
And that says families a lot of time.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
I think that is one of the most incredible aspects
of AI is the immedia access to the information that
you want without wading through, like you said, one hundred
pages of a PDF. Because the information's in there, and yeah,
if you read it all and you can process that, fine,
but most people, most humans are not equipped to do
that or it's really tough for time consuming. So what

(01:36:21):
you've done is you've fed all this into your model
and now you can ask these questions and you get
the quick answer immediately. So why is it important that
students kind of fully utilize all of these tools?

Speaker 11 (01:36:37):
Well, I mean just to your point of quickly getting
these responses back. Yeah, especially if you have two work
in parents, like Times of Luxury and so you don't
you might not have.

Speaker 12 (01:36:46):
Time to go through a hundred page PDF for that
one thing.

Speaker 11 (01:36:48):
I'll also note so a lot of these models running
into this pollutionation problem where like, okay, I trust what
GPT's given me. What we do with our chatbot is
we also link directly to the page in the document,
so you can double check with the uh, like with
with like the the written document of to make sure
that's correct, which is.

Speaker 12 (01:37:06):
A really nice thing that we do. But why why
why students? Why did students care about this? And like
why is this important? Man?

Speaker 11 (01:37:13):
Just because of student debts is really crushing families and students,
and like again, this is one of the biggest decisions
you can take on financially, along with buying a house
or or maybe getting a divorce.

Speaker 1 (01:37:24):
I'm not chare, Oh, let's not go down.

Speaker 12 (01:37:27):
Holy moly, I don't have a GPT bot for that.
I'm sorry everyone.

Speaker 11 (01:37:32):
What I what I will say is so we just
want to help students figure this stuff out. And so
one thing to note, there was seven seven point three
billion dollars in the face of this one point five
trillion dollars in student debt on the private market. Seven
point three billion dollars of unclaimed telegrams happen through twenty
twenty one to twenty twenty.

Speaker 12 (01:37:49):
Two over those two years.

Speaker 11 (01:37:50):
And so it's just it's just it's this thing where
it's like there's eight available, it's going unclaimed.

Speaker 12 (01:37:54):
And yet student debts rising.

Speaker 11 (01:37:56):
And this is in a cure roll like you filling
out your FASSA is not gonna structurally fixed rising costs
in the US. But you know what, saving you ten
K twenty K, Hey, you're going to really like that
when you're when you're your twenties or thirties paying off
that debt.

Speaker 12 (01:38:10):
So we just do our part in that, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38:13):
So this can help you get like reclaims or claim
I guess some of that pelgrint or try to get
some of that money. What about now, you said this
this is all going to change. You said that the
FASTA is getting some big changes. Will you adapt to
your chatbot to that.

Speaker 11 (01:38:27):
Man, Rich, it's a great question. So that's exactly that's
exactly right. So one of the ways that we've tried
to help because our nonprofits all about helping kids of
four in ten college. So what we've done in the
past is we've had FASA mentors kind of help students
fill us out. But one thing that you can't do
with a team of FESTA mentors is immediately.

Speaker 12 (01:38:44):
Retrain them in like eight hours.

Speaker 11 (01:38:46):
But when the new documents come online for in December,
for the FASA, we can swap out what we trained
our model on basically like the information it uses to
use this newer information within the day, we're going to
have up to date information right when that right when
that information drops, we'll have it in a way that's
condensed and easy for families.

Speaker 12 (01:39:07):
And why is that also important?

Speaker 11 (01:39:09):
Well, there's other forms of aid out there as well,
and we've started with the FACA to help out with
that process. But where we're kind of headache as an
org is expanding this to also help you file other
forms of FACA because again, not everyone has the chance
to talk to someone you can help them manage your
finances coming into college, and we want to provide that

(01:39:29):
for schools and families. Students just have a little extra
guidance thinking about these big, big financial decisions for them.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
Now, forgive me for not knowing this, but with fast
fat and I just FAFSAH and I just looked up
free Application for Federal Student Aid. So is that only
dealing with loans or is that also dealing with like
grants too, like where you just get free money.

Speaker 11 (01:39:51):
So it's it's it's a little bit of both. So
that's kind of the thing with the FASCA, is it.
It's used for a variety of reasons. And so what
we you often tell families is like, regardless of whether
you plan on using it for a loan or for
a grant, it's good to just knock out ahead of time,
because as I mentioned earlier, it's it it opens an

(01:40:12):
opportunity for for assistance, and and that you don't want
to leave money on the table, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
And so but what I will.

Speaker 11 (01:40:20):
Say is why families don't fill out, Man, it's it's
I don't know, rich, I don't know if you had
to felt the fast.

Speaker 12 (01:40:24):
I had a felt fast. A man, it is it's
a pain. It's like you got it your health. Oh
it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's a government application. I assume
it's not easy, Like it's not wrong.

Speaker 6 (01:40:34):
Oh no.

Speaker 11 (01:40:35):
And I think for a lot of families, we do
a lot of like like pulling like focus groups around this,
trying to understand what's going on with families in this process.
A lot of families feel like it's really invasive and
and you have to have a lot of information. And
that's also where kind of having a GPT bot that
is confidential you can put in your information. We don't
save your information and your questions at all kind of

(01:40:56):
nice because I think something that family friends is when
these schools run to open house fast sessions. You know,
you bring your W two down to the cafeteria and
then your counselor's looking at your W two.

Speaker 12 (01:41:06):
You know, just something about it for a lot of
family just feels a little weird.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
Wow.

Speaker 11 (01:41:10):
So that's I think having that anonymous like confidential ability
to ask your questions judgment free is also one of
those things that we're trying to think about with this process,
because you know, people's financial data sensitive, it's personal.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
All right, got about a minute, tell me why you
got involved in all this, Like what's your drive here
to start this fair Opportunity project?

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
Oh?

Speaker 12 (01:41:32):
I got super lucky.

Speaker 11 (01:41:33):
So I'm from rural northern Minnesota and I found out
about financial aid and a takeout line in McDonald's and
wrote an application to Harvard and was one of the
first kids in my community to get in. And so
when I got there, I was like, wow, like how
many how many of you have also worked in fast food?
I had a fast food job in high school, And
no one raised their hand.

Speaker 12 (01:41:53):
When giving the speaking at Harvard. At Harvard, and so
that's what that's great. It's like, these intitutionions are great,
there's a lot of great people.

Speaker 11 (01:42:00):
Well, well, we got to make sure that that that
you know that you can come from any background, any
zip code and still have a fair shot, still have
a fair opportunity. And as we look at these problems,
we're really looking at how do we make these solutions scalable,
easy to use, and leverage the best technology out there.
And thanks to Opening Eye for leasing those models, and
you know, we're going to keep using them to help
students families out.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
Great use of Ai. Lou Caney, co founder and co
director of the Fair Opportunity Project Fair Opportunity Project dot org.
Thanks so much for coming on the show. Get that
money for College. Coming up next, Thank you. Coming up
next is the feedback segment. You're listening to rich on Tech.

(01:42:40):
We were going to sell the house. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,
talking technology. We're going to get into the feedback segment.
But I want to talk to producer Bobo here. Bobo
runs the board and he told me about a interesting
scam that's happening when it comes to looking for places

(01:43:02):
to rent. So explain what happened, can you hear me?

Speaker 3 (01:43:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
Okay, great.

Speaker 13 (01:43:07):
So me and my wife are currently looking for a
place to live, and in the process of us looking,
I go to relator dot com and run across the house.
The house was completely remodeled, refurbished, and I contacted the
person about looking, you know, renting the house from them.
Sure the amount was affordable, It was really affordable. And
I contacted them and the guy hits me with, oh,

(01:43:29):
I just got a promotion. But we decided to rent
it and get the money like the residual income, and
he through relator. He showed me how to go through
opendoor dot com another realator company to get into the house,
to look at the house, to examine.

Speaker 6 (01:43:45):
The house, to make sure that I liked it.

Speaker 13 (01:43:47):
When he took when he found out that I liked it,
he sent me a link to fill out my application
and resume, I mean like the moving application, and also
to send him my deposit which would have been about
four grand out. Something didn't sit right with me. I
did research on the house. The house is for sale
on every known like relature company site. The guy has

(01:44:10):
been using this address to get people to submit a
deposit and he keeps the money and get you all.

Speaker 1 (01:44:16):
Your personal information and you never hear from him again
once you get some money. So okay, So this is
this is so interesting because it falls into what I
always say on the show that these scam artists use
something that we know to be true and real, but
then kind of turn it on its side. So in
this case, open door has a service where you can
tour they call it a self tour, where you can

(01:44:37):
submit and you know, look at the house. Basically you
get a coat on your phone that sort of unlocks
the front door right pretty much.

Speaker 6 (01:44:43):
And I walked in the house to the house was
completely empty.

Speaker 13 (01:44:45):
It was like anybody could look at it and see
it's in Carson, California.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
And did you fall in love with the house?

Speaker 13 (01:44:50):
Oh instantly everything in the house was brand new and
the amount was only like two thousand a month. I
was like, this is perfect, Like we can steal rent
and save to eventually buy our own home.

Speaker 6 (01:45:02):
And it was a scam.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:45:03):
I'm still a little heartbroken by because I was excited.

Speaker 1 (01:45:06):
So basically the person is take their look. So the
way this would work, and this could be replicated anywhere anywhere.
They would find a house that's for sale, they would
find one that you can do a self tour on.
They then lift all the information from that listing put
it as a rental on another third party site. It
could be any site, could be Craigslist, whatever, and then
they start talking to you and they say, oh yeah, here,

(01:45:26):
go to this link, do a self tour, check out
the house, make sure you like it. And then when
you got it and they got you hook line and sinker,
they want you to send you the cash.

Speaker 13 (01:45:32):
Pretty much, you fall in love with the house, and
it's like, let me your thing is, let me hurr
up and get on this for somebody else jumps on it,
of course, so you send them the first months in
a deposit, which would have been about four grand, and
then you go to contact him he disappears.

Speaker 1 (01:45:46):
How did he want you to send you the money?
I never got that far. Okay.

Speaker 13 (01:45:49):
Once he sent me to link something said look this up,
and then when I saw it, it was a red fan,
It was on Zillow, it was on all these different
sites for sale. Nobody had it for and I called
open door and told him. He said, people do it
all the time, but they do it a lot on
Craigslist because there's no real background check on Craigs.

Speaker 1 (01:46:09):
Right, such an interesting scam, and it's so easy to see.
So time was of the essence. There was pressure, there's money.
There's a lower rate than you would typically get, you know,
if you bought, like this house was renting at a
cheaper rate, so it seemed too good to be true,
and you're like, oh, this is really good. I want
to jump on it.

Speaker 12 (01:46:26):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
And also it appeals to the you know, the time frame,
like you want this and you fall in love with it,
and the next thing you know, you're sending this money
because you don't want someone else to jump on it
ahead of you. So it's got all these kind of factors.
But the best part was that he had the explanation
for why it was for sale, because he's like, oh,
we're gonna sell it, yeah, but now we're gonna rent
it because I whatever, we're gonna make the income.

Speaker 13 (01:46:48):
Not a country. So I got a promotion of my
new job. I'm not there. I can give you a
self tour. You can do it yourself, and when you're done,
just call me back at this number. And the name
when it popped up was like Brian's and the dude
had the most heaviest African acts that I've ever heard
in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:47:03):
Oh so it could have been out of country too, yeah,
oh wow, Well thanks for sharing that. And now, I mean, look,
these scammers, they will find new ways of doing things
on a daily basis, and that's a really good one
because there are people looking for places to rent and
by every day, and of course you find a good
place to rent, even in real life, there's a lot
of pressure to get that place quickly because someone else

(01:47:26):
is gonna jump on it if it's a good place.
So Bobo, thank you for that, appreciate it, and now
you're warned. All right, let's get to some of the
feedback segments here. Ruth says, glad to hear you back
on the air this weekend. I've done a lot of
research regarding smart watches and ended up with an Apple
Watch for good reason. It has fall detection. I'm eighty
eight years old. Fall detection is a biggie and most

(01:47:48):
of the smart watches do not have it. If they do,
there's a large monthly subscription charge. My son fell off
an electric scooter. The Apple Watch picked it up. Gash
on his face, cracked rib, no concussion, but his sisters
tracked him as he drove home. In your discussion of
smart watches, you didn't mention fall discussions, so I thought
you should be aware of that. For seniors, it is
very important. Ruth, absolutely, Ruth, good recommendation. I often mentioned

(01:48:11):
how the fall detection is a great great feature of
the iPhone. Uh don or sorry, the Apple Watch, Don says, hey, Rich.
Several years ago, you were talking about a company that
transfers old photos and filmed you still have the contact info.
I enjoy the show. I believe it was scanmphotos dot
com that was on one of our first shows. Here
Michael talking about the high price of subscriptions. I switched

(01:48:35):
to the ads supported plan on Netflix last month to
save money, but certain programming is locked and casting or
using the built in app on the TV is not allowed.
Having to watch only un portable devices and also watching
ads angered me enough to cancel my Netflix subscription that
I've had since two thousand and seven. Michael, I was
not aware that you couldn't cast if you had an
AD supported subscription. Pete says, Passo, what a surprise, Passo,

(01:48:59):
that's near where I hail. Rich, what a surprise? Which
wineries did you partake? Some notable history? A Polish pianist,
Oh gosh, I can't say this name. Experiencing Carpal Tunnel
during a visit to San Francisco, paid a visit to
Paso Robles on the advice of a doctor friend. Uh,
I don't know he bought wine anyway, Passo was great.

(01:49:20):
Thanks so much for listening to the show. Thanks so
much to everyone who makes this show happen. Thanks Bobo
for sharing your story. Kim on phones. My name is
rich jimiy. You can find me online at rich on tech,
richon tech dot tv. If you want show notes, we'll
see you next week. Bye bye,

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Rich DeMuro

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