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Rich talked about the tech to have on hand in an emergency situation.
Valerie is struggling to figure out what music service she wants to commit to.
Rich mentioned apps helpful to keep up with Wildfire activity near your home including Frontline Wildfire Defense, Watch Duty, PulsePoint and Firststreet.org
đ Kincade Fire survivor Mike Yurochko discusses Loti, his free platform helping disaster victims navigate insurance claims and rebuild their lives. Mentioned: A Fairy Tale
Pete in Fullerton is curious about the audio quality of phone calls on Ooma.
Stanley in Bettsville, OH wants advice on the best cloud DVR streaming option with Spectrum cable.
Apps to know:
Watchworthy - helps you find movies you will like.
Shredder - Tinder but for ski partners to hit the slopes with
Autopilot - Automatically tracks price drops on the plane tickets you buy and gets you credit for the difference.
đ Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison will break down the best TVs for the big game, from budget-friendly choices to top-value picks and premium screens with stunning quality. Recommendations: Under $500 - 55 inch HiSense U6N, 65 inch TCL Q65. Under $1000 65 inch Sony X90L, HiSense U8N. Splurge: 98 Inch TCL Q6.
Evan in Anaheim is curious about the Ninja Woodfire Grill and Smoker. Rich mentioned checking what Weber offers, too.
DJI is dropping its strict software that keeps drones out of No Fly Zones.
George Laguna Niguel wants to know if he should use Fire TV for content or subscribe to YouTube TV.
Lynn in Riverside is wondering if she can rescue her hacked computer.
𧏠Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm discusses efforts to revive extinct species through genetic engineering and biotechnology.
ScanMyPhotos.com is offering free photo digitization for CA wildfire victimsâemail concierge@scanmyphotos.com.
DriveSavers is offering free data recovery to CA wildfire victims.
Nintendo finally revealed details on the upcoming Switch 2.
Samsung is expected to unveil the S25 series at an event on Wednesday, January 22, 2025 in San Jose.
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Nintendo finally on veils the switch to I'll tell you what we know about the new console, my review of the one plus thirteen smartphone. Three new apps to know. One helps you find the best movies to watch. Another saves money on airfare, and there's tender but for skiers. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe the tech should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up those phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one, triple eight rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Give me a call. If you have a question or need some advice about technology. Email is also open. Just go to Rich on tech dot tv and hit contact Guests. This week, we've got Mike Yurachkoh. He lost everything in the Kincaid fire a few years ago. He turned his experience into helping others. He's going to tell us about his free platform that helps disaster victims rebuild their lives. And if you're looking for a new TV before the big game. We've got Digital Trends Editor at Large and friend of the show, Caleb Dennison. He's going to join us with his picks for every budget. Welcome to another episode of rich On Tech. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate it. As you know, here in the LA area, it has been really really wild because of these fires, and we are through the fires thankfully, but I figured it has kind of been a wake up call for a lot of people, especially myself, and just thinking about how to be prepared door an emergency. We've got so much technology out there in the world. I figured I would go over some of the things that you might want to have at the ready in case anything happens. You know, wherever you live, there's we talk about this. No matter where you live in the US, there is some sort of natural disaster risk. You cannot escape it. You're in LA it's like everything. It's like floods, it's wildfires, it's earthquakes, it's high winds. You know, you're in other places. It might be a hurricane, it might be a tornado, it might be heavy rains, it might be fog. I mean, there's just snow. I mean there's something that affects every part of this extreme heat. So no matter where you are, you might want to invest in some of this stuff. You might have a power outage, you might have a time when you're off the grid you have no signal. These are the things that I think you should take a look at. Number one. If you have not bought a portable battery pack in a while, the new ones are much faster at charging than before. If your battery pack, you know, one of these things you plug your phone into on the go. If it's got one of those old USB A ports, that's not good anymore. Get one with a USB C. And if you go with a wireless charging model, the new ones are what's called G two and it's spelled weird. It's Qi even though it's pronounced Chi. But G too. Wireless can recharge your devices faster, so fifteen watts instead of the old seven and a half watts. Go get one of those. I posted one to my Instagram. People are going bananas over it now. Some of these power banks also double as wall chargers, so I tested one called the Belkan power Boost. This is a wall charger, so you plug your phone in. But it also is a portable battery bank as well. So just by plugging your phone into this and plugging this into the wall, it's charged at all times. Even if you unplugged it from the wall, you're still going to get a little bit of charging for your phone. So these all have a number associated with them, a milliamp hour number. So the lowest is usually about five thousand milliamps. That's going to charge your smartphone about once. Then you go up from there ten thousand million amps, twenty thousand millionamp hours and there. The higher that number, the bigger the device is going to be, but also the more charges you're going to get out of that device. Now keep in mind you want to get USBC in and out to charge these things, because if it's just USB in to charge it, you're charging still going to be slow when you go to actually charge your phone. Number two a portable power station. This is great for sort of either. I mean, these things get giant. You can power so many things off of these, and they just get bigger and bigger every trade show I go to. But these are a portable power station. Brands like jackeri Ecoflow Blue Eddy, there's so many of them out there, so these are think of them as a portable battery pack for your phone, but for more like everything else in your house, small appliances. It's got an AC out lead on it, so you can actually plug in sort of a standard plug in addition to USB power. It's got every port you can imagine. So these are great if you want to just have a giant power bank for your house and when the power goes out, this will come in handy. Now also, and if you've gone hiking you probably know this, but you can pair these with solar panels. So a lot of these devices you can get a solar panel, portable solar panel that plugs into them, and that will give you more continuous power if the power goes out, so you can just continue charging these from the sun and it's not going to be it's a slower charge. The sun does not charge things fast, but at least you know you can have continuous power over time, and so that's another way to get these things. And they start at you know, one hundred and fifty dollars. They go up to probably one thousand dollars if you want, or more depending on how large they are. Now speaking, of solar charging. I posted this to my Instagram as well. I talked about it on last week's show, this silly Ecoflow, which seems silly, but the more I think about it, it's not a bad idea. If you're going hiking, you are without power, you just need a charge. You're at a you know, one of those festivals in the desert that's all day and you want your phone to be juiced up. So this is a solar powered hat and you can check it out on my Instagram at rich On Tech. It's from Ecoflow and it's got a little battery on the underside, so the top it's like kind of imagine a big floppy hat protects you from the sun. It's got SPF protection, UV protection, But on the bottom there's a little battery pack and it's got a USB c and a USB a plug you can plug your charging cable into, so you can theoretically just charge your phone all day long from your head from this hat. And I know people are debating the merits at my Instagram saying, you know, is this for wicked witches? Like what's the deal with this thing? But you know what, hey, if you need it, why not next up emergency rate. Oh that's about ninety dollars on sale right now. Usually it's about one hundred and twent emergency radio. You may be listening to me on the radio right now. This is a powerful source of information. People turn to traditional media when there is an emergency. So get yourself a crank, a hand crank radio. There's a lot of emergency radio brands out there. You can search Amazon for these. They've got the AFM bands, also the weather bands, so you can get critical information when you know, things like streaming or whatever else you turn to TikTok and that kind of stuff is not working. And the fact that it's hand crank is nice because you can just crank this thing up and listen. And speaking of hand crank flashlights, get yourself a nice flashlight for my house. I don't know why, but every time I need a flashlight, the battery seem to be dead. So you can combat that with another hand crank flashlight that you know works on just cranking it up. It's got a little battery in there, so yes, it will work, but you can use that hand crank to sort of power the battery. And I did have one person email me and say, hey, Rich, don't forget to remind your listeners that you want to crank these things every so often because the battery will go completely dead. And yes, with all of these things that have a battery, make sure that you are kind of maintaining that charge every couple of months. Just check on these things to make sure they're still working. But you know, these LED flashlights these days are brighter, they're more energy efficient, and just keep those batteries charged, because even if you're using traditional batteries, just make sure they're still working because for some reason, like I said, in my house, they always seem to be dead when we need them the most. Now, this was a new one satellite internet, so this is kind of an up and coming way to battle outages. I think the cellular companies were pretty good about getting their service up and running again in these affected areas, but that could take time depending on where you are. And you know, if you want to be connected all the time, you've got a couple of options right now. Well, one main option starlink is fifty dollars a month. They offer a backup internet plan, So this is a plan that you would have theoretically in addition to your regular home internet, and then you can just use that when you need backup internet. And that's fifty dollars a month. It's capped I think at fifty gigs a month of data. But then Amazon is gonna launch their project Kiper later this year, so they've got eighty three launches. They're gonna have satellite internet that they promise is cheaper and more powerful, faster than starlink, so competition's good there. Also, I would say digital backups of your essential documents like IDs, insurance policies, medical records. Put them on a flash drive in your emergency kit, or put them in a secure cloud folder so you can have easy access to this stuff during emergencies. You know, the last thing you want to do is be looking around for this stuff when you need it the most. And then my pal Jefferson Graham and his newsletter today added that maybe a portable car battery or charger, so you can get a device that can jumpstart your without the need for another vehicle. I have not tried these, but I've seen them and if they work, which you know, why would they not. If people like them, then you know that's a good idea. I did have some comments on my Instagram when I posted all of these tech things, and some other folks added fire retardant gel, a spryer, and a hose. Solar power station is a life saver. Don't forget headlamps for the family. A pump to draw water from the pool and to connect to a sprinkler system on the roof is essential. Don't overlook the life straw for clean drinking water. Take pictures of every room of your house, save them on a flash drive, email copies of important documents, keep iodined two percent handy to purify water in emergencies. And finally another Steve says guns and ammunition could be essential for some All right, we're gonna leave it there, rich on tech dot TV. If you want more information on any of this emergency tech, you can find the link right on my website. All right, coming up, we're going to take some of your calls eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one or email me at the website richon tech dot TV. Coming up, I'll have my review of the one plus thirteen smartphone, plus your calls right here on rich on Tech Valerie, you're on with Rich.
Hi, listen, I'm having a hard time. Yes, I did go to Wikipedia and I saw the very nice spreadsheeted head comparing all the different music streaming services. But my question is pretty simple. I want to know if I can put in my own playlist. I have a very eclectic kind of genre that I like, everything from Luchinolsen to Chuck Berry to deaf punk, and I need it for a thirty minutes of exercise on the elliptical machine.
Ah, Valerie, you can. You can do the playlist for the show with that eclectic taste. So the answer is yes. Almost every one of the streaming services will let you make your own playlists. Now you're using their music, so if you stop paying, everything will go away. You'll still be able to access some of the features, but there may be ads depending on which service that you're subscribing to. So if it's something like Spotify or YouTube Music or Apple Music, all of them lets you make your own playlists with their songs. So which one are you leaning towards.
I'm leaning towards either Pandora or Spotify because I am an elderly lady who is still on the elliptical machine and working out and very busy, and I need that music beat.
So yeah, yeah, I hear you. I like to work out on the I went on the treadmill this morning and I had some music. Here's the thing, Pandora. I guess they do have a plan where you can make and share playlists with them, But you know, and what's the other one, you said, Spotify? Yeah, okay, I mean Pandora. Okay, So Pandora traditionally has been more geared towards them playing music for you. So you pick a song and you kind of thumbs up stuff, you thumbs down stuff, and they will play what they think you will like and it gets really good. It's been around forever. Spotify, on the other hand, is much more like a music collection, like it's it's meant for like someone who wants to, you know, explore what's on there. And look at that. I'm trying to think about the plans that they have. So if you look at the plans for Pandora, it's ten ninety nine a month if you want that ability to make your own playlists. Okay, So Spotify is eleven ninety nine a month for individual premium, so twelve dollars. So it's a little bit cheaper to go with the Pandora. What about Amazon? Have you thought about them?
I don't know. Can I put in my own playlist?
You can? And here's the thing. Do you have Amazon Prime?
I do?
Okay, So I think Amazon Music might be a better choice because you can traditionally get that for a little bit cheaper than some of the other plans out there. So maybe Amazon might be something to look into. Plus you get audiobooks included, so that might be something that you're interested in.
Okay, So yeah, I'm on my son's Prime.
Okay, Well, if you have Prime, you'll still it'll still it should still work. So but you know, I've I've used every single one of the music services, and I think that overall, I think Spotify does a really good job, and I think they have great playlists pre programmed. That would probably be my pick overall. I think that Amazon is very simple. It's got good playlist, but it's very simple, and so you might just want to look at prices, and so I think when it comes down to pricing, another thing to keep in mind is paying in advance. Some of these services let you pay for like a full year at the same time, and you'll also save money there, so that might be something to look at as well. But the individual plan you can get. You can try a month for free on Spotify, so maybe start with that. You can try two months of free on Pandora. So if those are your top two picks, maybe just try and for free. Don't build all your playlists at once, and then you can decide which one you want. But I think that they're all going to do what you need. And I just built a playlist today. I have YouTube music. I just built a playlist today using that and it was super easy. The other thing and I'm not sure Pandora does this. I know for sure that Spotify does this. I know for sure that YouTube music does this. But when you make a playlist, and let's say I put four songs on that playlist, it will actually it will actually suggest other songs to put into that playlist, which is really cool. Now, if you're telling me you have a very eclectic taste, you may not find that handy. But for some people, you start putting in three ninety songs and all of a sudden, it pops up on the bottom here's some suggestions. You're like, Wow, you just read my mind. That's incredible. So those are my suggestions, Valerie, look at what the pricing is and I think that's probably the best way to go about this. But I think Spotify probably gonna be one of your best choices there. Let's see. Oh that's gonna bring us right to break, all right. Coming up, we are going to talk to Mike Yurachko. He lost everything in a fire himself and he decided to build a platform to help others rebuild their lives using everything that he learned. We're going to talk to him coming up right here on rich On Tech. I'm gonna go through some apps real quick before we get to our guests talking about the wildfires here in Los Angeles. And this is for anyone really, but a couple apps that might help you might want to have these on your phone. First off, Frontline Wildfire Defense. This is an app that you put your address in and it kind of has all these real time updates, so you can see weather updates, fire danger in your area, and emergency notifications including fire alerts. Plus, it can give you checklists and emergency groups for coordinated communication. If there is something that affects your home watch duty, you probably heard about this one. I'm not going to go over that too much, but Watch Duty is really good. It's a volunteer led kind of app that has all kinds of information on fires, so that that's been a lifeline during this time. Pulse Point is a nine to one connected mobile app, so people get live alerts about incidents being responded to by the fire departments and emergency medical services near them. If you know CPR, you can also get alerts to help people out near you that need CPR. And then first Street dot org. First street dot org. This is one where you can pop in your home address and it analyzes all kinds of data to tell you information on flooding, hurricane winds, wildfires, extreme heat and air quality near that address. Again, First Street dot org. Now let's bring on Mike, your oach co. Mike has a story to tell about what happened to him and the Kincaid fire a couple of years ago, but he used that information to build a free platform called low t dot com l O t I dot com and this helps victims that have been, you know, in a disaster rebuild their lives. Mike, thanks for joining me.
Yeah, thanks a lot. Rich for having me on Really I really appreciate it. And those are some awesome resources that that you just outlined for everybody and glad to just sort of help be part of the solution down there.
So low T dot com slash learn, l O t I dot com slash learn. That's what you've built. First off, tell me about what you know. Well, I guess you want to start with your story. Tell me what happened to you?
Sure, yeah, So we were fellow victims.
So I was burned in the twenty nineteen Kincaid fire and just sort of the short version of that story. We actually we were out of town and we were sent a periscope if you remember that old vlogging platform, and we actually watched the fireman battle the fire on our home. We lost most of the main property, but the main house is actually saved. We had a ton of smoke damage, and then a couple of weeks later we were then vandalized and looted and folks had moved in there for a couple of days and actually pulled out copper and plumbing.
Fixtures and things like that.
So in short, we had a relatively long traumatic experience and then that obviously compounded itself in the ensuing few years, and so to your general point overall, I basically have dedicated the rest of my life and career to kind of helping folks like me that went through this, because it is it's just exceptionally aumatizing, and there's there's so many things that.
Are happening at one time, and so what we've.
Tried to do is provide a what we call it just a roadmap to recovery that includes just hundreds of free articles and thousands of gloss returns and dozens of downloadable documents and stuff.
So it really tries to help.
People all the way from the very beginning of even before there's an evacuation, just emergency planning that a lot of your listeners might might be interested in, and then kind of walking through the whole process of finding housing and obviously dealing with insurance if we'll talk a bit about today, but then also managing construction and replacing personal property, and then even coming out the back end what we call that kind of life two point zero where sort of we want you to recover stronger than you were before, just maintenance tips and trying to help prevent small claims and what to look for in a new policy the next time the same, just to prepare for the future.
So it's it's really trying to we're trying to.
Look at the whole kind of responsibility of home ownership and you information for wherever step in the process.
You actually are so wow. So so I imagine that dealing with insurance companies. I had to deal with mine a couple of times for you know, small auto accidents, and then of course our house we had a little flood. I say little. Of course it's tens of thousands of dollars of damage even for a little flood. But it's just a lot of back and forth. And you know, the insurance companies. I always say this, the insurance companies or whatever company you're dealing with, always has the upper hand because they are doing this on a daily basis. This is the first time the person is doing it, and so it's it's not a level playing field. So is that kind of the case with with what you you see?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean obviously that you know, there's a there's a few things happening on the ground in LA right and in terms of housing, and but insurance is a very early process or one of the very first things you should really do is notify them. And and and to your point, it's not a you're not playing with kind of a full set of cards relative to what they have, right, And I would say that you know, in our experience, a lot of the field adjusters and the folks on the ground on insurance company side, those aren't bad people, right. I mean there they got into insurance generally speaking to try to help folks that that type of a thing and try to help people recover.
But but yeah.
When you really dive into it over the ensuing couple three four or five years type of the deal in terms of rebuilding, of course, they have a lot more resources behind them. They've done this. This is usually the first time a homeowner has to go through it. And so just even learning simply that the basics around a declarations page on an insurance policy is something that's that's kind of a little bit of a hill decline and then cover. Some insurance companies understand everything about what's going on inside of your policy. They have experience across millions of clim it's their business, right, So it's a it's a very complicated sort of recovery process on that, and then from a homeowner's standpoint, even just beyond insurance, there's a whole bunch of other stuff that's going on.
Right.
We can talk about insurance and deep dive on it, but there are other things that are happening. Relationships with your bank and dealing with your mortgage if you have one managing construction, rebuilding that and then overlaying those insurance terms like depreciation and what is actual cash value of my couch?
You know, just like these.
Things that become very personal of like how do I value you know, my couch or my artwork or whatever it is, my collectibles and how you That then kind of goes back into that policy and you know, from an insurance company standpoint, it's a line item, but for a homeowner it's very traumatic and you kind of have to but.
You do have to sort of work your way through it.
So, so, Mike, what is sort of like, you know, I've got a lot here, but what is sort of like your bottom line advice you want to give people? Like what do you think people should know that are dealing with this or they have friends or family, Like what do you want them to know? I mean, they can go to your site to get all of these downloadables and the PDFs and the terms, But what do you think they should be thinking about?
So I think just like a couple things on the ground, maybe sort of two different messages. Right, So for the folks that are on the ground in LA that you know, our early advice in those first few days is really housing, right, It wasn't even really about insurance. It's it's actually housing. And you can sort of see this demand surge happening. There's a lot of a press around price gouging and things like that, but that general theme of demand surg is actually going to happen more or less throughout the rest of this process over the next few years. Everything from kind of getting contractors and labor pools, materials, getting permits and inspections. The whole community is going to be overwhelmed throughout this whole process. So I would say preaching patients, but then also really being informed through the process. Right, And so right now you know we've kind of moved, we're in that housing sort of area, and then really beginning to understand what your insurance actually covers.
We have a need article.
It's base.
It's called a fairy tale, and we try to kind of humanize how to read your declarations page. I could give it to you for their seconds if you're interested about a friendly giant in your house, but basically, really you want to kind of understand at least the basics of what's going on in your policy, and then for the sort of the rest of your listeners, there's trying to get ahead of some of this stuff where you can actually adjust your policy now or when you're renewing your policy, kind.
Of look out for a few things.
We do have some recommendations what we call endorsement essentials, But an endorsement is kind of like a little rider and extra in your policy that goes beyond the I'm paying a one thousand dollars premium for a million dollar coverage kind of thing. Things like replacement costs of not just getting the value of your couch but on that day, but having the money to replace the couch at retail is.
Kind of a big thing.
Having inflation guards, so obviously we're in a very inflationary environment, so being able to protect yourself against those kind of market forces is a really really important thing. So I think that you know on the grind and you kind of have one message where it's like this is everything's overwhelming, and you're not trying to overwhelm more.
Right, It's just like, hey, let's let's start with the basics on insurance and.
Housing and then we're going to get to the next step, right, and then I think for the rest of the listeners that just have a obviously really care about what's going on and and field for these folks. So you know, take a look in your policy, see try to understand kind of the basics.
Maybe take some pictures of your house for the future.
Just you have an under a working understanding of what's in there and how you want to stay protected long term.
So all right, Mike, this is all great advice. We're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me. The website is low Ti l o TI dot com slash learn. So many downloadable documents, all kinds of articles covering everything from I mean just so much here. It's you sent me this website or someone sent me this website, and I just said, this is really good information stuff that you can download. It's just such a great help. So again, l O T I do slash learn. Mike thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks a ton Richard, thanks for everything else that you're doing too.
Just appreciate the time here and thanks for getting all the rest of this information out in the folks hands.
It's needed and it's a desperate time, so thank you.
Appreciate that. All right, coming up here, we're going to get to more of your questions. I see on hold there so eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. The website if you want to link to what we just talked about is rich on tech dot TV. It will be linked up there. This is episode one oh five. We'll be right back. Is it too early to talk about the TikTok band I don't even care about this. I hate to even say that, but I don't have TikTok. I don't use TikTok. I do know that is a popular social media app. One hundred and seventy million people use it apparently. Yes, I've been on there. Yes I've posted on there in the past, but it's just, you know, just not for me. I say that now, play that in a couple of years, if this thing is still around. But anyway, here's where we stand with the TikTok band. So depending on when you listen to this show, it may already be unbanned or not banned, or still operating or whatever. That's why I don't want to spend too much time on it. But apparently the Supreme Court did uphold the ban. This would be the first, you know, major social media app shut down in US history. Apparently twenty billion dollars in revenue would be at stake here. Apparently also Biden's administration said they will not enforce any penalty, but you know, that's only for one day until Trump takes over. And then apparently the TikTok CEO is attending his inauguration. There's people that might want to buy it, including Elon Musk. So there's just a lot going on here. And I don't know if you've heard about this, but the one of the number one on apps in the App Store this week was an app called Red Note. This was an app out of China that's kind of like an Instagram for them, And so people are protesting by downloading that app, saying, hey, you know you're worried about this app from China, We're gonna download even a more Chinese app that's not even meant for the US citizens, and so it's just a whole mess with this stuff. But I think at the end of the day, I don't want to predict the future here, but I think TikTok is going to be around. I really do. Let's go to Pete in Fullerton. Pete, you're on with Rich It is going fantastic. What's up with you?
I enjoy your segment every morning on Channel five. I watch you every morning nine am nine am.
Thank you, appreciate that.
I've got three really quick ones for you. Ice three you could handle. I heard you last week and after that first, and I hadn't heard that name in a long time. It's funny because on KFI they've been advertising all this week with their business phones. Oh interesting, really, if you've used it, or if you know anybody has, and what's the what do people think of the quality?
Uh?
Well, I used it in the past. I've not used it recently, but I had. I had a phone line from them in the past for many years, and the quality is fine. So every phone call that we have nowadays goes over a voiceover IP anyway, so it's all the same uma they have their own technology they call pure Voice HD, so they say that it actually captures twice the information as traditional phone lines or landlines. I think that the idea of the kind of HD quality phone call it's there, and it's it's going to be just fine. Do you have a reason why you need super specific high quality calls or are you just making sure it's not going to sound like garbage.
I'm just fun to finally set up with AT and t's landline service, paying seventy some.
Bugs jump back, No, get rid of that. Get rid of that. Get uma. It's you can pay as little as zero a month. Just pay the taxes and fees. I think it's like it comes out to like ten dollars. But you'll be perfectly fine, are you. I mean, I can't imagine that you're not going to be happy with the quality of the service on this on UMA, So I would definitely go with that. What what are the other two questions we charge? After the first?
What would you.
Recommend for a cheap, reliable carrier?
I own?
And the other one is about a basic phone not non ample for an emergency. I'm looking for a phone and a cheap carrier and just a basic phone that you is it's reliable.
For basic carrier. I would do one of the super cheapies that you can pay in advance for like a year, so you know. The one I like. I think that's that's really cheap if you just want to pay like four bucks a month is Mobile X, so if you're familiar with them. There's also tell O T E l l O. And that what's great about them is you can build your own plans, so if you just want calling, I think their plans started like nine bucks a month, so you can really just like coordinate, like how much do you want just just a phone line, some texting, maybe like a tiny bit of data on there, but it's all customizable. That's tell O T E l l O dot Com. The other one I said is Mobile X. They have a great plan that starts at three forty eight a month or under. I think it's like four dollars a month, whatever it is. It's pretty inexpensive. I like Mint Mobile, but I know they were purchased by T Mobile, so you know, now they've gone corporate. That's another way to go, and you can pay the whole year in advance on that, so I like that because you don't have to worry about the bill, right, Or you can just go to something like a Walmart and just buy like a cheap plan that they have there and just get a prepaid card that lasts for a year, and you can do that. That's like, what's that? It's not smart Talk. That's another one. The straight talk is one of them that they have there, but that one's kind of expensive. But yeah, that's another way to go. As for the phone, I would just go with a super cheap kind of flip phone. So there's a website dumb Wireless dot com. They have all of the super cheap flip phones. They've got a Nokia twenty seven to eighty for eighty eight bucks. You know, why not just get that. That's that's going to do exactly what you need there, Pete. So yeah, that's what I would do, is just go to their website and check it out. Thanks for the call. I can't believe you answered three three questions. How long do I have before I got a break here?
Oh?
Ninety seconds? Perfect? Okay, Well we'll do a question from email. Jannis from Seemi Valley rights in I have an iPhone and I use Yahoo email even though I block scam emails, they just keep coming from different addresses. I don't feel safe unsubscribing from these fake emails, so I just block and delete them. But the problem doesn't stop. Is there a better way to reduce the number of these fake emails? My spam and junk folders catch some, but I'd rather not see them so often. Thank you, Jennis, I will give you my advice for getting rid of spam email, which, by the way, is impossible. I still get them. I use Gmail and yes, every once in a while you get some spam emails through. They do go to the spam folder, which is great. Don't worry about the ones that go there. That means the email service is doing its job. But number one, delete these emails without opening them. That's my best advice. Do not interact these emails. They have little trackers in them that when you open them, it says, oh, we got someone that's opening these, let's send them more emails. So number one, do not do that. Go in, make sure you have the best spam protection settings turned on, and then do not unsubscribe to any of these spam emails. You can unsubscribe safely from emails from like Macy's or Home Depot, those are going to honor your requests, but all these other ones, when you hit on subscribe just gives you more. The other thing you could do is turn off remote image loading. That way they can't track you if your email service supports that. Eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Let's talk about a new smartphone that is now available on the market. It is the one plus thirteen, so one plus. I'll just tell you my story to set this up. I will never forget. I was in the backseat of a cab or I think it was an uber in San Francisco and probably ten years now at this point, and I saw this phone and I, you know, I used to be a real Android enthusiast, like really love Android, and I still do. I just most of the time we're using an iPhone, but I have Androids as well. But anyway, but I saw this phone, and I was always looking for like the best Android phone. And I saw this phone that this driver had, and I was like, what phone is that? To him? And you know, San Francisco is kind of a very cutting edge place, so he was like, oh, that's the new one plus. It's like one plus what is that? And it just looked like the coolest smartphone I had ever seen. Anyway, got a lot of experience with one plus over the years. I can't believe they're up to thirteen. But the thing about one plus to know is that they're always sort of challenging the status quo, right, Like they give you a lot for your money, and that was kind of their their value proposition in the beginning, and then they sort of got away from that, where the prices got high and the features got low, and then people will like gave them a hard time. And now I feel like they're back, and it's like a it's been the ship has been righted right, the steering wheel is now going the correct way. And so these phones, this latest the one plus thirteen is really really incredible. So I've been playing with this for the past couple of weeks. It's got all the top specs you can imagine. So the latest Snapdragon eight Elite processor, up to sixteen gigabytes of RAM, a triple fifty megapixel camera system with Hasselblod which is their partner, and their sort of the look of their photos, A six thousand millionam hour battery with new technology inside. I don't even know what this is. I'm not even gonna explain because it's just like what, But it's apparently the battery on this thing, in my experience, is like unkillable. You cannot deplete the battery. Six thousand million hours, by the way, is really high. Like most phones topped out at four thousand a couple of years ago, and now they're at five thousand, and this one six thousand. And it's got a great display. It's got IP sixty nine water resistance, so that means that this thing is more water resistant than any phone out there on the marketplace. I put this thing in a hot tub, no problem. You could put in a washing machine, dishwasher. It will survive. I mean, that's it's that wild comes in a couple of colors, Midnight Ocean. That's the one they sent me to test out. It's a really cool blue color, Arctic dawn and black eclipse. So let's see some of the features on this thing. Works with wet hands and gloves, so you can actually have you know, the screen could be wet and still works nicely. I don't know if you ever used a screen on your phone when it's wet, but it's like it jump all over the place because the water droplets like mess it up. Oh so the magnetic charging this is kind of weird. It doesn't have magnetic charging built in, but it's built into the case, so you do get that magnetic support for accessories, which is really nice. It's got Circle to Search, It's got Google Wallet pass scanning, which, by the way, if you have any Android this is such a cool feature. I did it this morning. So if you have an Android phone and let's say you get a QR code for a barcode or something, maybe not like a ticket Master ticket, but almost anything else. I go to a lot of events, they give you these barcodes that you got to you know, scan to get in. You can go to Google Wallet and it says add anything and you just put in a screenshot of that barcode and it will create a pass for you. So if you have a gym membership or something that you want to create a pass for, you can do it that way. Let's see four years of software updates, six years of security patches, a couple of unique connectivity features I've identified. It's got this iPhone file sharing capability because they're trying to like get around the whole air drop thing. But it does require the iPhone person to download a separate app, which good luck getting an iPhone user to do that. That's not going to happen. It's got this neat Bluetooth walkie talkie function, so even if you're off the grid, you've got no cellular, you can still use Bluetooth to walkie talkie to another phone, but it has to be another one plus, which again kind of a downside, and upcoming support for photos and messages, so that's kind of cool. So they're gonna but again the other person has to have a OnePlus, so it's probably gonna be pretty rare that you're going to use that in real life. Now, I will tell you this is the best Android smartphone I have ever tested ever when it comes to the way it works, the sort of the feel of it, the look of it, the style, the size, the software, the speed, everything is just so good. But now I'm going to get to the downside, and that is the camera. So this camera is just fine. Like if you are not a camera person, you don't care about the camera. This phone is going to be incredible because it charges fast, the battery last forever. It's fast. The software is awesome. The camera is going to be just fine. Like you can take a look at some of the pictures I took. They're fine. It's just not as good as what you get from the pixels of the world, the Samsungs of the world, and the iPhones of the world. That is my experience. And the selfie camera, which you know I'm partial to because I take a lot of selfies. I'm on TV. I'm saying, hey, I'm on TV, come watch. The selfies are particularly bad in my experience. So where do we stand with the one plus thirteen. I think if the camera is not your primary kind of concern, this is going to be an amazing phone for you. And it's nine hundred dollars, by the way starting price, which is pretty good. And they've got some like trade in deals and all that kind of stuff on their website, so I checked that out. Before you get it, that's going to get to you. The twelve gigabytes of RAM and two hundred and fifty six gigabytes of storage model if you want the top of the line, which is sixteen gigabytes of RAM and five hundred and twelve gigs of storage. That's gonna be nine ninety nine. Now take a look at that compared to you know, the Pixel of the World or the Samsung's, the high end phones, they're gonna be you know, over one thousand dollars. So the fact that this is nine hundred is pretty darn good. So that is my review of the one plus thirteen. I've got it right here, and it is. It's just I will say it's one of my favorite phones so far of the year. But we're only eighteen days into the year, so a lot can change, a lot can happen. But for me, the only downside of this phone that keeps me from wanting to use this as my daily driver is really the camera. Like I can't really I get better video and pictures out of some of my other phones, including the iPhone and some of the androids I use. All right, let's go to Stanley in Bettsville, Ohio. I know you've been waiting for a while. Stanley, Welcome to the show.
Hello, Rich love hearing your tech tips. They really help a lot.
Oh well, thank you, I love doing them. What's up?
I'm way past cutting the cable cord and now this past week when I got hit with an increase on I don't know if you want me to say brand names.
Oh sure, whatever, Well.
The old YouTube TV A lot of people I'm deciding to go or think I want to go. We have as our ISP Spectrum provides internet service to the thous and I have Spectrum TV as part of the bundled package. Well, this week, when I thought I was going to cut YouTube TV, I started looking at Spectrum and realized that with my Spectrum TV I can watch nearly everything I can with my YouTube TV account.
Yeah.
Wait, you were paying for Spectrum and YouTube Yeah. Oh man, Well I'm not going to call you stupid, but you know you're paying double.
Well I bet I'm not the only person listening right now. But anyway, here's my quandary. One thing we loved with YouTube TV was the ability to record and store in the cloud. And I'm looking for the best option to record and store to hopefully a cloud DBR with Spectrum. Now. I just recently came across ZOOMU Zumo Xumo, Yeah, which I think can be used with my Spectrum TV app.
Yeah, that's theirs. So Zumo was a startup that charter purchased, and so that is their answer. So if you want to streamline things and just go with what they offer, I've tested this thing out. I don't think it's the most powerful streaming box out there, but I think if you want that integration with with your spectrum, I think it's going to be a great fit. The main thing to know is that you have your beholden to the apps that they offer on there, so you can't there's no like app store on this device where you say, oh, there's a cool app I want. They have the apps already built in and they've got all the main ones covered. You can go on their website and make sure that the apps that you want are on there. But that is the main downside is that it's not as like it's not as big of a platform as like the fire TVs of the world or the Rokus of the world. But yes, if you want to just use this and have that cloud DVR, that's probably going to be your best bet at this point. Anything else I recommend to you is going to require third party service antenna or a subscription to another service like a YouTube TV or a Sling TV. So Xumo Zumo I think they offer like usually a first six months free or something like that. But Stanley, I think that's the way to go for now.
Okay. My other situation is we also have I know this is really dumb, probably a Roku box. We use Roku and and Spectrum TV and YouTube or that's what I've been using. Can I record using the Roku box.
If you have the Spectrum app on there, so I would download. What I would do is on your main TV, get the zoom O box, record on your on your satellite TV. On your secondary TV, I would get the Spectrum app on your Roku box, and I believe that's been a while since I used it, but I think your recordings might be on there as well, so I would check with that, maybe call Spectrum and just see. But the Spectrum app I believe is on the Roku TV platform. So that's the way I do it. Go Zoomo for the primary TV, Roku for your secondary TV, download that Spectrum app. That's that way, Stanley. You're paying one price, you're getting your content all the places that you want it, and it's something that you're familiar with. Great questions today, Thanks for calling today in Bettsville, Ohio eighty to eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one again the website for the show Richontech dot TV. Follow me on social media. I am at rich on Tech. Coming up, you know, I'm gonna tell you about three new apps to know. Three new apps to know, save you on travel, Tinder for skiers, and an app that can help you find good movies to watch right here, coming up next on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, celebrating, by the way, a milestone my newsletter which I started, I don't know, maybe a year ago. Well, I started a couple of years ago, but I got serious about it maybe a year ago. And sure enough we have cross the threshold of forty thousand subscribers. So forty thousand people every week welcome me into their inboxes and thank you for that. So if you want to sign up for that is completely free, go to the website rich on Tech dot tv. Now the question you might be wondering, well, how many people actually open the email? Because that's always you know, people get these things, you delete it. I'm on so many mailing lists and I just delete them, but I'm happy to say we have about a fifty percent open rate, so that's pretty good. I'm I'm good with that anyway. Rich on tech dot TV, go to the website sign up for that. Just got an email from Edwin. He says he is a senior Spectrum tech. Just heard the caller mentioned Roku and Spectrum. Yes, you can record from a Roku, but you have to be signed up for Cloud DVR with Spectrum. So there you go. You got the answer. That's what I love about this show. You can see me as sort of the information clearing house, right Like I am like a train station. He's all this information just flowing through me. I may not know it all, but at least someone out there is listening and says, hey, Rich, here here's a little Birdie told me. Here's what you need to know. All right, let me tell you about three apps that I think you should know about. These are three new apps this week. Number one Watchworthy. This is an app that previously did TV recommendations based on your likes. Now they're expanding into movie recommendations. So I downloaded the app. You basically go through a whole bunch of movies. You say, I like it, I love it, I'm not interested. I didn't like it. You rate a whole bunch, and then eventually it will learn your tastes and give you personalized movie suggestions along with what's called a watch a Worthy score, so it tells you how much you're likely to like that movie. This is all based on ranker dot Com did a story with them years ago. They rank everything. If you go to ranker dot com, let's see, they pretty much rank like anything in the world, like whatever you can think of. There's some sort of like list on let's see here, I'm trying to see, like what give me some lists? Oh eleven medieval ghost stories that No, anyway, they've everything's ranked on that website. But anyway, this is movie stuff, so you can see where the movies are playing on Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO, Max, Apple TV plus. You can put in all the services you have just to see movies from there. Of course, you can browse by genre and filter. So yeah, I used this last night. Actually watchworthy dot app, watchworthy dot app for that. Then this is kind of cool. Tinder meets the Slopes. A new app called Shredder is basically helping you find ski buddies. So the app is called Shredder and it tracks your performance data like your speed, your vertical drop, and your distance, and then it uses these stats to match you with compatible writing partners. So if you want someone to hit the slopes with this is you know, it's not a dating app, but hey may turn into that. Who knows. It can also help you do other stuff like coordinate your carpools, plan ski meetups, share your stats with other riders. It's free, it's on Apple devices, and it was crafted by ski enthusiast Alfred Arnaud, who built it after struggling to find writing partners at his ski level. So Instagram, dot com, slash try Shredder is the website if you want to download that app, and then this is a web app. It's not necessarily a downloadable app. Maybe it will be in the future. But it's called Autopilot, and I've seen this in the past. This is a new app that's trying to do this once again, but Autopilot. Once you sign up, it's got this Lowest Fare Guarantee LFG, so it monitors the flight tickets that you purchase for price drops and if it drops more than twenty five dollars. It will secure an airline credit for the difference. I think it's twenty five dollars. There's a minimum on what they will they will do, so you link up your email. It imports the flight reservations as soon as you make them. It tracks those price those ticket prices in real time. It'll go to the airline get that price credit when the price drops. And they don't charge you a a monthly fee. They just charge a commission. So anything they save you they charge you twenty five percent. So let's say you get one hundred dollars price drop, one hundred dollars credit, they will charge you twenty five dollars. They say they can get the average flyer. They say the average flyer overpays five hundred dollars annually on flights. I think this would have to be someone that flies a lot to really get some noticeable credits here. It works with the major airlines Delta, United and American, that is with autopilot dot Com. With autopilot dot Com, I will link up all those apps on my website. Rich on tech dot tv All right, coming up, you think about a new TV for the Super Bowl, This is a good time to buy one, we will have Digital Trends Editor at Large Caleb Denison to talk about his picks for every budget. I'm very excited to bring on my next guest. Caleb Denison is with Digital Trends. He is the guy that is reviewing every TV out there and always gives us some great picks. He has been on the show before, and I figured, since super Bowl's coming up and this is one of the best times to buy a new TV, let's get some refreshed picks. Caleb, Welcome to the show.
Hey Rich, thanks for having me and it's great to be back.
Before we get to the TVs, tell me about your extracurricular stuff that you do. I know you. I follow you on Instagram and all of a sudden I saw you like playing in a band or something. So explain what you do in addition to these reviews. Yeah, or is this a secret?
No, it's not a secret.
I put it out on Instagram for anyone to see, although I don't do a ton of posting with the bands that I play with.
But yeah, I'm.
A professional trumpet player, have been since just out of college. Actually worked on cruise ships for a little while, playing trumpet and gathered a lot of experiences and stories there. But yeah, when I'm not reviewing TV, usually on the weekends, I'm out there playing a lot of weddings, special events and festivals.
That is so cool, very very fun. I just the reason it brought to my attentions because you were playing at a place that I went to a wedding at and I was like, wait a second, what's he doing there? Anyway, Okay, let's talk TVs. And first off, you went to CS and what was a trend this year with TVs?
Yeah, if I had to come up with a theme for CES this year, it would be bigger, brighter, better, but for less. And that's what we saw across the board. We saw a lot of large screen displays. We saw you know, aggressive brightness, just more beautiful than we've seen before a lot of really high end technologies that are just coming out for us to kind of wrap our heads around. But you know, those TVs tend to be the super aspirational type television right there.
They're likely to be very.
Expensive when they do come out, and probably you know, most of us are not going to be buying that kind of TV. But when we see that kind of technology, I like to talk about. How about the trickle down tech theory. You know, the more advanced these new technologies become, the more what used to be cutting edge technology starts trickling down into televisions that you know everybody can afford.
Yeah, that's always a good thing. Any new terms that we should be aware of this year, Oh.
So many new terms, rich, I mean, CEES is a great place to go if you want to have your mind just boggled with acronyms.
Right, So we have.
QD mini led, we saw tri chroma or RGB mini led, a lot of different ways of approaching TV technology tweaks on on what we've had before that you know, attempts to make them better, and you know there's a lot of them, and you know we'd be here all day if we tried to cover them on your show. Certainly couldn't fig fitted in this segment. But you know that's why you want to go to Digital Trends and specifically visit our YouTube channel, you know, because over the course of the year, I'm going to go through each and every one of these and explain what they actually mean to comment folks.
Okay, well, let's get to some actual factual recommendations, because that's what people actually want. I mean, do you want to start the under five hundred.
I will get to the under five hundred. But before I do that, I wanted to let you and your listeners in on a little bit of a secret. Now there, I have to stay away from mentioning specifics. You know, your in tech yourself, and you understand sometimes news is shared with us ahead of its official announcement, but it's under embargo, which is to say that we're not allowed to talk about it until a certain date or time.
With that said, I have heard that there are.
Going to be some aggressive Super Bowl TV sales, particularly from TCL, that are going to launch tomorrow, the nineteenth of January. And I've got to tell you I've seen the prices, and I'm not overstating things when I say that they are the best sale prices on TVs that we've seen, maybe ever, certainly since Black Friday. And so I am going to read off some TVs that I recommend, but I would like everyone to know that as of tomorrow, you should see some pretty incredible sales on TVs. And you're right, super Bowl is a time, a great time to buy a TV because we're you.
Know, we're nearing the end of the model year.
The twenty four TVs need to be cleared out for the twenty twenty five TVs, and so you know, there are always great sales right around this time of year, and so beyond, it's just exciting to get a new TV for the Super Bowl. Let's remember, we keep these TVs for a while, right, and we want.
To get something that we're going to enjoy for a long time.
And it's just wonderful that there are these huge sales coming right up.
Yeah, so I would say maybe spend a little bit extra, Like if you're looking at a TV that's three hundred or four hundred, go with the four hundred, just because you know, you do keep this thing for like a decade. I mean at least I do. So, I mean, one hundred dollars over ten years is really not that much, all right, So what do you recommend this year?
All right?
Well, let's remember that when you have a strict budget for a TV, So when we talk about under five hundred or under one thousand, usually have to make a little bit of a decision. Do you want to get the biggest screen possible? With maybe not the most amazing picture quality, or are you happier with maybe a not a huge screen with you know, extra special picture quality. So I'm going to give a couple of different sizes is in each category, and I guess we'll start with the under five hundred. Like you said, my pick for the best fifty five inch TV under five hundred dollars would be the High Sense U six N. And it's got all the technology that you want in it. It's got many led back lights, it's got quantum dots for you know, really vivid expressive color. It runs the Google TV operating system, which happens to me my favorite built in TV operating system. And it's just you're gonna hear me mention High Sense in TCL a lot here because these two brands are offering extremely amazing bang for your buck. And for somebody who hasn't bought a TV recently, maybe those aren't as familiar brands, but I'm here to tell you they've been around for a while now, they've really up their game. Their quality control is very good now and they've become very reliable TVs.
So I can tell you last time we talked to you, you recommended the High Sense and I bought it and I love it, so it's been fantastic.
Yeah, I'm not going to give a recommendation. I can't stand behind you know, it'll come back to me. But if you want to go a little bit bigger under five hundred dollars, I would recommend the sixty five inch TCL Q sixty five. Write that down Q sixty five. It's a wonderful TV at the most popular size right now. Sixty five inches also runs Google TV, has a lot of the similar technology that I just described in the High Sense, and I think you'd be pretty happy with that as well.
Okay, what about a little bit more expensive.
Right if we want to go under one thousand, my favorite TV under one thousand dollars right now would be the sixty five inch Sony X ninety L. Sony, you know, they've been in the game a long time and their top tier when it comes to processing, and so when you're maybe not watching four K content, you're just watching cable or satellite or you know, lower quality streaming stuff, you know, just your basic YouTube stuff. Sony processing really cleans up that image and makes it look absolutely gorgeous.
With that said, I'm also a big fan of the High Sense.
You eight and a couple of steps above that U six I mentioned before also available sixty five inches. Well, well under one thousand dollars. I think it's hanging out around seven hundred right now. But if you do want to go bigger under one thousand, you can use that U six and I recommended earlier and get that in a seventy five inch version. That's that's what happens if you spend a little bit more money on that same model to get a bigger size.
All right, we've got about a minute left, so give me your best to the best.
The splurge, well, I'm going to say it's Super Bowl.
We want to go big for a splurge.
I'm gonna say real big, right, I'm talking about a ninety eight inch TV. I would say, look at the High Sense. I'm sorry, the tcl Q six at ninety eight inches. Check the internet tomorrow, ninety eight inch TCLQ six.
You will be shocked at the price.
I can't tell you what it is, but it's well under two thousand dollars. It's under sixteen hundred dollars as a matter of fact.
Wow, Well, when you get that specific, you might as well just say, what is no IgE kidding? I'm actually looking at the email. I looked it up from TCL and yes, it is a very aggressive price for a ninety eight inch TV. I hope you have room for it in your living room. Caleb Dennison, what's the best place people can find your reviews about TVs?
Well, if you want to read them, you can go to Digitaltrends dot com our website, or you can go to YouTube. Just type in Digital Trends and you'll see my face.
Thanks so much for joining me. Appreciate it. You got a gig this weekend?
Or what?
No gig this weekend?
Unless you call golf a gig, in which case I have a few gigs.
There we go. Thanks so much for joining me, Caleb, appreciate it. Rich on tech dot Tv, I will put all of his suggestions on the website. Episode one oh five, look for the show notes there. Coming up, we're gonna talking Nintendo switch to plus dji making some changes to its drone restrictions. Plus your calls, I see you, I feel you. We're gonna take your calls. Coming up next eight eight eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. And by aphilia, I mean I know you've been waiting for a long time. We'll get you on. Welcome back to Rich on tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. Let's go to uh Evan in Anaheim, California. Evan, you're on with Rich?
Yeah, hein' no.
Rich.
I was calling today because I've been looking into the ninja woodfire electric barbecues that have like little pellets that you use to to smoke things or just add that smoky barbecue flavor. And I find there a really good alternative to guess or charcoal barbecues because a lot of us in apartments aren't allowed to use one.
Yeah.
So I've heard some good things. I've heard some bad things in reviews, but nobody really elaborates on the bad. And I am on the fence with this thing in my cost Co shopping cart for two ninety nine for the smaller version. They don't offer the larger version there. And I just wanted to know what your take was on those.
If you had one.
I don't have one. I do have an I do have other ninja stuff that I do like I think Ninja's kind of a good up and coming brand with all these kitchen appliances and just various things they make. I did try pizza from this woodfire oven over in Berlin, Germany last year at the IFA show. So I did try pizza. It smelled good, it looked good. I mean, everything worked for us, but of course someone else was cooking on this. What are you comparing this to, like, what are you gonna smoke stuff? Or are you just looking for an electric grill?
You know, a little bit of both grill and smoke. And they actually it's funny because Ninja just has so many, so many products. Oh yeah, the oven is actually different than the grill, even they have a specific grill. And the reviews that I saw is that the oven is good at being an If you want to grill, get the grill. But if you want a oven, if you want a grill in the oven, don't get the oven. Right, it didn't do both well. Yeah, but they have like a regular sized grill for two ninety nine at Costco, and I think they have a larger middle of the medium size. Yeah, if I can throw xcel with like a connect and I think they haven't even have a larger one that's closer to a grand that's way out.
Of my budget.
I was looking at the smaller the medium.
I noticed the medium.
Has like temperature probes and whatnot that you can use with it. But I'm a big fan of the meter probe. I don't know if you like them, but they're a wonderful probe. It meets every time.
It's funny. They sent me a meter when it first came out. I think it might have started as a kickstarter, but they sent me one. I used it once. I hated it and I never used it again. And I literally think it was like a prototype that they sent me. And I felt so bad because now people love this thing. I ended up seeing them at a trade show and I said, ah, I feel bad because I you know, I kind of hate on this thing for so long. They gave me a new one. I have not used it, but I I'm a big fan of thermometers with cooking meat, you know, on the grill. But I just have an instant read, so I don't use the probe. But I know the probe is easier because you could just put a try tip on there and next thing you know, it just tells you when it's ready to go instead of checking it every you know, five minutes. So I will test that. That's in my in my list of things to test. When it comes to this, this Ninja woodfire grill. Have you looked at the Have you considered the Weber?
I didn't even know Weber made one? Why did I count them out?
Yeah? So, I mean I was at a Weber event where they had all of the different grills and I was not I didn't even know they had wood, pellet or electric or any of these things. They even make a blackstone type grill. They make their own version of that. And my last Weber lasted ten years. So I just bought a new one recently. But my last one, I mean it was I only bought a new one because I felt like I had to. I was like, well, this thing's so old, it must be going bad. But it was perfectly fine. But I would compare. I don't think the price is going to be as in expense. I'm looking at their cheapest electric grill looks like it's about three ninety nine. I don't know if they discount them at all. I guess my advice on the Ninja is I think the quality you're gonna get out of it is kind of like it's gonna be maybe not top tier quality, but kind of like right underneath that. So if you're okay with that, I think you'll be fine. I don't think it's gonna have the best. You know, it's not gonna rival what you can get out of a dedicated kind of wood pellet, you know, grill' that's you know, truly gas fired or whatever. But the good news is, Evan, is that you said you were looking at a Costco. Can't you return anything to Costco?
That's kind of what I was thinking of, is even if it was made of Chinese and I don't have a problem returning it.
So I say you just go ahead, buy the grill, try it out. Make you know, don't make just one thing, make two or three things. See what it's like. You know, if it works, it's great. I mean it's it's a good price, that's for sure. And if it's not, bring it. But either way, I want you to report back. Okay. That's my ask is that you report back in a couple of weeks what you think of this thing.
Okay, yeah, I will. I'll try around some proteins and some sausage links and I'll let you know what I think.
All right, Evan, you know where to find me, Send me an invite. I'll be there to try some of that great question. You know, I am a big griller. I love grilling, and I you know, you may not know, but I'm actually a big cook in general. Like I'm the one that cooks in my home almost every night. And so my wife, oh my gosh, she's gonna be really embarrassed I tell the story. But when I met my wife, I'm not kidding. Oh gosh, I even tell this story. This is so bad. When I met my wife, I went to her parents' house, and I'm not kidding. On the stove on a stove, there's a tiny pillow that said for dinner, I make reservations a pillow on the stove. Who puts a pillow on a stove? I was so taken aback because I grew up in a house my parents had five kids. My mom would cook every single night. I'm talking to dinner for seven people, do you know how much? And this was back in the day when they didn't have shredded cheese in a bag, and they didn't have these things that were like already ready to go, and like she prepped food like the old fashioned way, Like I'm not kidding. You'd get a one pound brick of muzzerella cheese. Yes we're Italian. We had mozzerella cheese and just sit there and like grate it for like an hour, and like prep these pepper steaks and all the stuff that she would make on a nightly basis. And so we'd have dinner, and then we'd have the threat of just wait till your father gets home, because I'm telling them everything you kids did today and all the stuff you said and all the things did. Yeah, remember those days you were scared when dad got home. Oh my gosh, all right, uh. Dji making some big changes to its drone software Starting now, Dji is changing how their drones handle restricted areas. So instead of hard no fly zones, you'll now see enhanced warning zones that match up with official FAA airspace rules. So basically before you had to go through a whole bunch of stuff, now all you have to do is update the app, and when you hit one of these zones, it'll just say, oh, you can't really fly here, and you go okay, and then you can fly anyway. So it's really putting this on the honor of the pilots instead of the drone automatically stopping you. So you're gonna get alerts. But this is a big shift. DJI introduced their old system back in twenty thirteen, so they're really strict for the past ten years or so. Now they say more people know about drones and understand the ramifications, that's why they're making the change. But this is a big, big change, so you maybe see more drones in more places on the news given giving people trouble eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. This is rich on Tech Selena from Walnut Creek, California. Rights and I'm interested in finding out if there are better options than comcasts for business, internet, phone, and TV at my office location in Walnut Creek. What are my options? Let's see, Selena. I think a great starting point is to check which companies offer availability. Now this may be a little bit different because you're talking about business versus personal, but speed tests speed test dot net, that's the website that people go to to check the speed of their Internet. Well, they do something that's kind of cool on the back end, the kind of catalog all that. And they have this feature called speed Test Performance Directory. And so if you go to the website and it's speed test dot net slash performance and you type in your zip code, I'm just going to type in one that I know nine two eight, and that will give you all of the different providers in that area and the pricing. So this is typically, you know, meant for residential, but a lot of these companies have business as well, so that'll give you an idea of what who has the lines in your area. But that's where I would start. Let's see that there used to be another one that I don't know if this has business. Let's see here. This is all Connect all connect dot com. They've been around for a while, but I think that one is a little bit more paid about our providers so works individually providers. So yeah, I mean, you know, you could just look for look for those two websites all Connect and then the other one again is speed test dot net, and I would I would check there. All right, let's go to uh George in Laguna. Igel George, You're on with Rich.
Hello Rich, Thank you for taking my call.
Thanks for calling. What can I help with?
Well?
On Black Friday, I bought a cheap Toshiba seventy five inch Fire TV, and you're right, the prices have gotten.
A lot better.
How much you pay for that?
I beg your pardon?
How much you pay?
Oh about four hundred and fifty nine something?
Oh wow, that is wild. Four hundred and fifty nine bucks for how many seventy five a.
Seventy five inch Toshiba Fire TV off of Amazon through best Buy?
Oh wow, that's a lot. That's complicated. But okay, so what what what's your question?
Okay, So I've always had a provider, so either Hulu or Fling that I was using YouTube when I got this new TV.
But this new TV is a.
Fire TV, so there's no stick. It's all built in. Ye Do I need am I double dipping my that guy a few calls ago? Do I need to have YouTube if I have a fire TV?
The Well, it depends what you want to want. So there is a ton of free content, and Amazon has a lot of free content on Fire. They've got like a whole section all these providers, like whether it is Roku, whether it's Amazon with Fire, whether it's Google, they all are really into these free channels that are that are ADS supported. So if you look on like the Google TV or the Fire TV, they've got all these sections of like sports and news and you know whatever. You know, Amazon had this thing called free V I think that's now been blended into their standard Amazon Prime, so you can watch a bunch of stuff for free. The question is, George, it comes down to what you want to watch, if you want to watch, it just really comes down to that, and that's that's it. So if you want to watch ESPN, let's say you're not going to find that for free, the linear channel that you want to watch right now. If you want to watch something like let's just say KTLA like, of course, you can download the Ktla plus app and you can stream our news for free. If you want to watch random old movies or just random movies, you can watch those. If you want to watch news clips from all the different news to you know, news outlets, NBC News, they all have a streaming service that they now offer for free, you can watch all of that stuff. So the short answer is, if you don't want to pay a nickel for anything on this device, you don't have to, and you can just deal with what you've gotten for free. And there's also services like Pluto TV, There's two b Tubi. They all offer everything for free as well. So again it comes down to if you want to watch like Bravo or something like that, like a channel, you're not going to find that channel streaming for free. Might you find some of their content out there, sure, but if it depends on what you want to watch, does that make sense?
It does?
So I think the difference mechanically is if I want to continue with YouTube, then I have a home channel, I have a DVR, and I have live TV, and I can go through and see all the channel live exactly. Look, but if I'm going to go ahead and use the fire TV, that I have to download the individual apps because the apps substitute for channel.
Yes and no, because fire tv does have its own level of kind of like streaming content just kind of built in at the ground level, and you'll find that where there's like I think it's called news or there's just you know, they keep they keep putting those new tiles on the screen that say, like just watch stuff for free. So but I think it really comes down to do you want to watch like standard cable channels that you can DVR at your own leisure and specific shows that you DVR. That's really the experience you're getting from a YouTube TV and of course live TV and live sports and things like that. But I think you've touched upon a really kind of an interesting nuance of TV viewing these days. With streaming is that it's all over the place, and a lot of this stuff is repeated in different places, and it's you know, there's bits and pieces of it all over the place. But if you want that traditional cable TV experience with your channels that you know and you understand that are streaming linearly, which means you know, you're tuning in live just like everyone else at the same time, that's going to be something like Hulu, Live TV Now, Fubo or whatever, the YouTube TVs of the world, the sling TVs of the world, that's what you need to subscribe to. But if you just want to watch content and just find stuff that's that's streaming or watching, you know, you just want to watch stuff, you're going to be just fine just picking through the stuff that's on the fire TV device. And of course downloading some apps as well. Hope that helps George appreciate the call. Let's go to Lynn in Riverside. Linn, you're on with Rich. Hi.
Oh, thank you so much for taking Michael. Be patient with me. I'm seventy nine years old, and what I wanted to know is since I'm not really a whole day in a computer, it's only once in a while, and also because I do voluntary work low income and especially seniors like me. Now, last Tuesday, all of a sudden, I had problem with my features. So I went, as always, check my email first, and then I googled the brand and the model number. Well I was on it. Something on the page went on tap and it started like shouting, don't touch me, don't turn me off. Your computer is compromise, it will be black. Call this number, call this number repeatedly, and I got so nervous, and it stupid me. I feel so hypocrite because that's exactly what I'm telling some singers not to call. And I called the number.
Oh you call the number. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you did you get did you get scammed out of anything? Uh?
Now I checked my bank and I also called my bank to tell them and it's okay, it's just I don't know the first one he was saying. He was quite nice, and I thought he is really, because he's telling me whatever he's doing. Yeah, he told me to our type on the shirts on the lower part of the laptop. Uh, ultra of you.
Yeah, they want to get they want to get software on your computer where they can access and remote access into your computer. Did you do that? Did you?
He was doing something. He clicked off all my open windows. And afterwards he said, like he will put security Microsoft. I don't have to pay it, but I need he needs my name, I address, you know, Etcheter. And that's when like I woke up, and I just politely because I didn't want him to get mad and then do more harm. I just said, I have to talk to my kids because I cannot decide on my own.
Please.
Please. He gave me his name, his id NUM, his employee id number, Etchetera, Ejettera. But still, you know, I just said no, And finally he said, okay, then just call me, you know. And then I deleted the oldtra view that he downloaded. And then the next day I called Microsoft and and and and then I told them from A to Z. That first guy said, oh okay, let's download that will review again, you know.
Okay, so you called the numbers.
Yeah, I talked to Microsoft because it always gets in the middle cut off.
Yeah, you're not actually talking to Microsoft. That's another scam artist that you're talking to. So let's do this. No more calling numbers because most of these people do not offer tech support on your computer, so they are If you're googling a number for tech support or calling a number that they gave you, those are also scam artists. So the thing that you need to do. Did you give them any of your personal information? Do you give them your bank account numbers? No? Okay? Did you give your social on my on my file?
The only thing is that now I cannot when I turn on the laptop. Uh, it's an old HP and I want to see my files.
Yeah, Okaylynn. What I would do is we got we gotta I gotta go to break but I'm gonna put you on hold here and we're gonna we're gonna talk to you off the air. But I think the main thing you need to do is I think you should probably get some outside help on this computer. So if you can uh. I would let's see you're in Riverside. There are there are some companies that can help you with this. I would take a look maybe at like Hello Tech that's just one company, or maybe just bring it to the best buy in your area, get the geek squad to help you out. But you need a trusted person to kind of look at this computer, make sure that their software is off of your computer. If you know how to do it yourself, you can go in uninstall it. But it sounds like you got to get the software off your computer, and it seems like you might have dodged some of the personal information, which is good. So the good news is you can reset the computer. Microsoft has a way to reset the computer, clean everything off, but keep your files. I'm sorry this happened to you. It happens every day and it is the worst people. These scam artists are just literally out to get you every single day. Sorry about that. Rich on tech dot TV. I'll talk to to Lynn off the air. Here, let's take a break and we'll be right back. Ah Man, we are off the air with Lynn. Sounds like she has a trusted friend that may be able to help her with that computer. So sounds like it's hopefully gonna have a good ending there. Jody writes in my thirteen year old daughter recently switched from Android to iPhone. I can't track her location anymore. For her safety and my peace of mind, I used to rely on parental controls when she had Android, but now I'm at a loss. I worry about her walking home from work while I'm at work. Please help. I love watching you on KTLA and I've learned so much, Jody. Best app for this, I believe, is Life three sixty. It is completely free. Obviously, it's like everything else these days. It's a freemium, so you can use the basics for free, but install it on both your phones and you will be able to track where she goes. She could probably even see where you go if you allow that on your end too. But to take this a step further, I would also put a tile tracker on her backpack or her purse and you can. That works hand in hand with Life three sixty because they purchase tile. So that's what I would do Life three sixty Tile tracker. That's going to be the best way cross platform. You're asking Android to iPhone, iPhone to Android if it's Android, Android iPhone iPhone, I'd probably give a different you know, iPhone air tag or find my but that's what I would recommend for that cross platform functionality. Thanks for the question, Tony writes in, Hey, Rich, I've been hearing about scammers using scanners and crowded air is to steal credit card and personal information from wallets and purses. Do you think it's worth investing in a safe wallet or a safe card? I trust your opinion, and I don't want to fall victim from a scam from these companies selling a product that they're ineffective. All right, so many people sent me it must have been a video going viral on TikTok or Instagram about these people. They get close to your wallet and they steal your credit card number. It ain't happening. Let me tell you that the new credit cards, yes they have RFID on them, Yes they can be activated to check out closer further than you think. But nobody's walking by you and stealing your card information. I just don't think that's happening. Should you get an RFID blocking sleeve or a wallet?
Sure?
I don't think you need it. I don't think you need it. Modern credit cards have all kinds of encryption built into them. You think Chase is gonna give credit cards someone can walk by your wallet and just grab your number. No, not gonna happen. Okay, coming up, We've got a great guest, the real Jurassic Park. Someone's trying it. Yeah, sounds interesting. We'll talk about it coming up next right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology. The website for the show is richon Tech dot TV. If you want links to anything I mentioned, you want to follow me on social media at rich on Tech. Sign up for the newsletter. It's all right there on the website. Browse the stories I do for TV. I'm excited for my next guest because Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies, and I'm sure there are many similarities drawn between what the Colossal Biosciences is trying to do and that movie. But let's hear from the man himself, CEO Ben Lamb, Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
So you're trying to bring extinct species back to life? Explain?
Yeah, so we decided, George, I who's arguably the father of synthetic biology, decided that we wanted to start a company that's focused on first the extinction and then second species preservation. And we have this mission to bring back some of these iconic species, put them back into the wild, and partnerships with governments and indigenous people groups and conservation groups, and then take a lot of those technologies on the path of the extinction and apply them to conservation and make them free to the world.
What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure you've heard that before. So what species are you talking about here?
Yeah, so there's three iconic species or flagship species that we're working on.
One is the woy mammoth.
The second is the thighlacine also known as the Tasmanian tiger, and then the Dodo bird, which is arguably the symbol of human cause extinction.
I feel like I've worked with a couple of Dodo birds over the years, but I don't think that's the same thing.
So what intinct?
What?
Okay? I mean? So did you watch Drassic Park and get this idea? Like where did this all come from? And where do you start?
Yeah?
So what's funny about that is people always ask, you know, this is really George Church's vision, and I just feel like I'm lucky enough to be partners with George and be the steward.
Of his vision.
And people often ask, you know, was George inspired, because he's been talking about doing the Mammoth you know for years before I came around, and uh, and then we built it into a company, and people always ask, you know, was George inspired Briant Jurassic Park.
But if you actually go back to Michael Crichton's book.
In Michael Crichton's book, there's actually a DNA sequence and early on in the book that's actually George's work from the seventies. Oh wow, you know, George will joke and say I kind of think that, you know, Michael Kriichten was inspired, you know by George.
Given the fact that.
It's you know, almost statistically impossible for it to be nearly the same code.
That's wild. So oh, he wasn't credited in the book. I see, it was just part of what he had. So how close are you to doing this? And how are you doing it?
Are you?
Are you taking the DNA from the the the amber, the mosquito in the amber?
Yeah?
So not that we've tried. But amber is not the best, uh you know, vault for DNA for the years. It's very porous. It doesn't hold DNA pretty well. So we actually work with a lot of different samples from all over the world, some from museums, from from some from fields studies, some from actually working directly with our seventeen academic partners around the world. And ancient DNA is highly degraded, it's highly fragmented, so you actually have to put a lot of ancient DNA together. It's kind of build that reference genome in the high level process is you know, we use about sixty five mammoth genomes ranging from about three thousand years to seven hundred thousand years old. We assemble that and we compare it to its closest living relative. In this case, it's the Asian elephant, which is ninety nine point.
Six percent the same. They're actually closer.
Mammas are closer related to Asian elephants than Asian elephants are to African Elephant's always.
Kind of blows people's mind.
And then you use a I and computers and some of these algorithms that we've built to do comparative genomics to really understand what genes have been lost to time that really made a mammoth of mammoth, because a Nation elephant is you know, basically a nodly, non coal tolerant mammoth. And then we identify those genes and we engineer those genes into an Asian elephant south. So you mentioned Jurassic Park, it's almost like reverse Jurassic Park, where they were trying to fill in the holes of ancient of the in the dino in the quote unquote dino DNA with that of frogs and other things. We start the other way. We start with the frog and then we understand what made a dinasaur diasord then and plug it in. Only it's in the case of the mammoth.
And you know, we're pretty far.
We're in the editing phase, meaning that we've done all that competitional analysis, we've done all that ancient DNA work, and we're in the editing phase for both the Tasmanian tiger and the mammoth, and hopefully by in the next six months we'll move into editing for the dodo as well.
And then how do you go from the DNA to actually creating an animal.
Yeah, so you're at being these live cells.
So you create a mortalized cell lines with the closest living relative as I mentioned with the mammoth is the Asian elephant. You then start to edit the individual cell lines themselves. And then once you get to the point where you've done all your molecular and functional and all your tests in the lab or maybe in some cases in animal models like mice and others, you actually start to identify you know, are our traits working, are they being expressed or the right way? And then once you feel confident about it, you go through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer better known as ploning. Is kind of like what Dolly made famous in the nineties, only the technologies come a long way.
Since since the nineties.
And then you move the nucleus from that of a germ cell or somatic cell or sorry a somatic cell into that of a germ cell or egg cell, and then you implant that into a surrogate that will then grow your species. And so that is our current process. We also have a seventeen person team working on artificial wombs.
And you know our goal.
You know, none of our first generation and species will be born ex utero, but long term, we hope that we can use our artificial wombs for not just the extinction of key species, but also for conservation.
All right, Ben, everything you're telling me right now, my brain is literally just like exploded. So how realistic is it that you're going to create a dodo bird or a wooly mammoth and bring it back.
You know.
I we raise bourn and thirty five million dollars a day for our company, and then we also raised fifty million dollars for our foundation to support our conservation efforts around the technologies from the company. You know, we feel very confidence at our investors. You know, I think that in the next few years we could see Our goal is by the end of twenty twenty eight to have our first mammoth calvs. We're currently on track. You know, these things are hard, so you know, sometimes things can slip. We feel very very confident in it. But nam us have a twenty two month gestation, so you know, if we continue on the current course and speed with some of our other projects, I think it's highly likely we could see an animal a different species even before the mammoth. So I think we are within the next few years we will see the world's first extinct species back on the planet.
Is there any danger in doing this?
You need to be very thoughtful and careful on this right And so we work really closely with you, our seventeen academic partners around the world, our ninety five scientific advisors, we have.
An Indigenous People Group.
Board.
We also have a conservation board. We have forty eight conservation partners. So you need to really look at what is the ecological benefit of bringing back these species, what are the technologies that can be used for sister species? So how is bringing back the mammoth helping elephants today? How is rewilding the mammoths back into the center helping the ecosystem today? And so you have to go through this very thoughtful process. And so even though we don't have mammis or dots or thio scenes, we've actually already built working groups in country that we meet with every single quarter. So we have like a Tasmanian Tiger working Group in Australia and in Tasmania specifically that we meet with every single quarter, giving them updates, doing ecological studies, doing scientific peer reviewed studies on what is the ecological impact of rewilding or reversing tropic downgrading that's happening there through the loss of the thio scene. And so all of these species that we're working on when extinct directly because of humans or because of other anthropologic effects on the ecosystem from human intervention.
We're trying to undo the sins of the past, if you will.
I mean, but we also have a modern world, so it's it's very different than when these animals live the first time. Are you are you going to make a Parker now?
So our goal is put all these species back into their natural habitat.
So you know, that process is called rewilding.
You know, I do think that long term, you know, as we get sustainable species back in the wild like in Tasmania. You know, we'd love to work with Tasmania on you know, ecological preserves where people can actually see them back in their natural habitat and hopefully that would for ecotura them and make people want to protect the land and whatnot.
And to your point about.
Ecosystems, you know, the Tasman ecoystem is pretty much the same, uh, you know, minus you know, some of the food chain a little bit messed up since it's lost its keystone predator.
Same with Mauritius.
Uh.
You know, they've had this influx of invasive species that actually led to the downfall of the dodo that we're working with them to help eradicate. But the tundra, there's actually been eight scientific papers that have put out, not even by us, that look at if you were to rewild Mamus or other cold tolerant large herbivores back into that Arctic ecosystem, how the biodiversity and how that ecosystem could come back alive. Right, And so what's generally agreed on by all scientists is that a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem with predators and prey and large herbivores is better at sequestering carbon, it's better for food security, it's better for how water treatment happens. So it's really really interesting kind of the trickle down effect you have when you remove a keystone species, whether it's an herb, a large herbivore, or a predator from the environment.
Wow CEO Ben Lamb of Colossal Biosciences, the website Colossal dot com. The world is watching, Ben, So thank you for that interview. That was really Wow.
It's just like, yeah, thanks so much for having me. As we get closer to animals, we'll come back.
Okay, sounds good. I want to pet one of these things.
I'll recommend that, but that's at your own risk.
Thanks Ben. I'm I'm scared of running into a bear in the woods. Now I gotta worry about a wooly mammoth. Oh my gosh, the Dodo bird. I feel like I can deal with. I feel like that's something I can deal with. All right, Coming up, we are going to open up the feedbag. It is as always overflowing with your emails and texts and all that good stuff, so we will get back to that. Right here, you are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Couple of news items to get through before we get to the feedbag, which is flowing over overflowing, flowing, over floweth over whatever. Nintendo finally revealed details about the switch to the next big gaming console from them. Looks like a beefed up version of the original. It's bigger, it's got redesigned controllers that seem to snap in instead of slide in. It's got a USB sport, it's got a headphone jack. It's got a sturdier kickstand. Old games or many of them will work, some may not. Also looks like they're teasing a new Mario Kart game, but we don't have many more details other than that. April second is when we're gonna get more details about this. I have a hunch that this is probably gonna launch in time for the holidays this year. It's definitely launching in twenty twenty five. The first Switch sold nearly one hundred and fifty million units, so this is a big one. And you're also going to get some demos. They're setting up in cities including New York, LA and Dallas during April. So there you go switch to That's very exciting for Nintendo fans. Let's see here. Scan my photos dot Com is offering free photo digitization for California wildfire victims. They say that some people may have lost their pictures, so friends or relatives have duplicate prints or slides. They can have them scanned at no cost, and digital copies will be uploaded email concierge at scan my photos dot com. They've got a team set up to handle these requests and it is available now concierge at scan my photos dot com. Meanwhile, Drive Savers in Northern California Northern California offering free data recovery for Southern California fire victims. So they're offering up to million dollars in free service through January thirty first. That covers one device per household or business for fire and water damage devices including computers, external drives, phones, flash drives, and camera cards. They say that extreme heat can really make this tough to recover, and you should call them immediately. If you think you have a drive that they can save, they will send you a free shipping label. Drive Savers is the company and this week Samsung unveiling their new phones, expecting it to be the S twenty five series of smartphones. That's happening on Wednesday, January twenty second in San Jose. I will be there. I'm looking forward to it, can't wait. I thought the S twenty four Ultra was one of the probably the best phone of the year on the Samsung side of things, the most powerful, the best cameras, all that good stuff in one package. And so we'll see what they have. I know they're going to be pushing AI heavily. All right, let's open up the feedback. Joe writes in I always love your clips. I have the k Tour pocket socket for when the external battery dies. It's also a workout. What does that mean? Oh, oh, I see because it's a crank Oh, you crank it up. Okay, this is the pocket socket USB one amp it. Yeah, you crank it up and it has a little battery there, so it's also a workout. There you go. I don't work for them. Thanks Joe, appreciate that. Let's see here, Hi, Rich, I love your show and I've been a longtime listener. My husband teases me because I'm always saying, guess what Rich taught me. I'm excited to share something with you for a change. I just learned that the iPhone calculator can double as a currency converter. Tap the calculator icon in the bottom left corner, swipe and turn on convert While I'm not traveling anytime soon, I've been using it while watching squid Game to figure out the money they're talking about. Hope this tip helps your listeners as much as your advice has helped me. Thanks for making tech accessible to everyone. Take care, Agnes great tip. I just learned that myself actually on a YouTube are a short on Instagram. So yes, convert right in the calculator, Don writes in Already, twenty twenty five has become a difficult year with a complex horizon ahead. Your newsletter's opening segment caught my attention as it resonated with concerns I've observed over the years. Many people, including my children, have quote cut the cord, abandoning live television and radio, especially local news. They now consume content through streaming, often from a narrow lens, which I believe creates a skewed view of reality. Discussing a major news event with them is challenging. They're disconnected from what I would consider the real world. Your comments and the newsletter hinted at a similar concern, highlighting the need to stay connected not only to emerging technologies, but the pressing issues today. Of today, live TV and real journalism are fading, replaced by a fragmented media landscape. This is troubling. Yes, I agree, Don, I talk about this being in traditional media. People they have their opinions and it is backed up by what they watch on social media and on YouTube and on Instagram, and it's all coordinated for them, so it's not even worth arguing anymore. We used to have a public discourse and things and talk about stuff, and also used to trust certain news outlets. Now people don't even trust the mainstream media outlets. So it's all I don't know what's gonna happen, honestly, don but that's why I'm here a voice of reason in this madness. Let's see here, Auto rights in, Hey, Rich, I heard you mentioned notes programs for cell phones on your show. I use my iPhone notes program with my Gmail account so I can access my notes on my PC. Thanks for doing a great job with your show and happy New Year, Auto. That's a great way to do it. And Kelly versus via Facebook Rights in love the show. Rich, You're the best. I'm not even someone who loves technology, but I try to listen to you every Saturday. You're such a voice of reason. What I just say, and incredibly kind of respectful to everyone who calls in. Thank you for what you do. Praying you and your family stay safe. Thank you, Ann. Kelly appreciate that I am a voice of reason. Are and I just ask my wife? Jim writes in Rich longtime listeners, so many great nuggets, but honestly, it feels like the whole world is trying to mug me online. Makes me want to cancel my internet, lock the doors, and never go anywhere. Yeah, I hear you. Just like that caller we got earlier with the hacked computer, and we got text messages every day that are trying to hack us. We've got email scams. I mean, there's so much we're up against. Just keep a cool head, stay steady, don't fall for this stuff, and just be critical of anything that comes your way. You have to just imagine that someone's trying to scam you, phone call, scam, whatever that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show. Links to everything I mentioned on the website. Go to rich on tech dot tv. You can find me on social media the Voice of Reason. I am at rich on Tech. Next week, Yes, I will have my thoughts on the new Samsung smartphones. Thank you so much for listening. I know there are so many ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone who makes this show possible. Adam in for Bobo Today. Great job. Kim on phones. My name is rich Demiro. I will talk to you real soon