July 29, 2025 • 11 mins
KFI & KTLA tech reporter Rich DeMuro joins the show for ‘Tech Tuesday.’ Today, Rich talks about PayPal adding crypto payments, BitChat app enabling offline messaging, and a new affordable humanoid robot.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, we haven't done this in a little while.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Rich on Tech our tech segment Rich every Saturday from
eleven am to two pm right here on KFI. He's
on KTLA every day, Instagram at rich on Tech website,
rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Good morning, Rich, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Back, Thank you, Bill, Good morning to you. Good to
be back. I mean, Hawaii, it was nice, but this
is better. Oh yeah, that's believable. Oh believed you, no issue.
We believe every word of that one. Okay, a couple
of things I want to share with you and maybe
you'll tell me the truth on this one. Talking about Bluetooth, Okay,
(00:40):
no internet, no Wi Fi or cell signal required.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It has a real potential for disaster.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I thought Bluetooth was just you know, car phone to
you know, your cell phone to the car. I mean,
I ever thought Bluetooth had any distance to it? Am
I wrong on that?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're not wrong on that. There is a it is
a limited distance you know, wireless networking communications profile. So
and that's why it's been used for things like headphones
and connecting to car and you know, Bluetooth audio. But
this is this is truly truly I think transformative. This
is a new app called Bitchat. It came from Twitter
(01:23):
co founder Jack Dorsey. He's done a lot in the
crypto world. He obviously founded Twitter. I interviewed him one.
He's very unique guy, very thoughtful person. But this is
an app that lets you send messages without Wi Fi,
without Internet, without cellular. It just goes on Bluetooth. So
if you have a Bluetooth device like a phone, you
(01:44):
could be an airplane mode and chat with people like
you said, around you. So it uses all of these
phones to create a mesh network. And so depending on
where people are, that mesh network can be bigger or smaller,
depending on how many phones are in the area and
how many people are on this app. But you can chat,
You can you know, do a couple of little silly
(02:06):
things that you know, talk to people like DM people.
You can block people, but it's very basic. But the
potential for this bill in a disaster situation or any
sort of peer to peer chatting situation like let's say
your work does not allow any sort of chat apps,
people can just jump on this and chat to their
hearts content. Because they can't block Wi Fi, they can't
(02:27):
block Bluetooth. So this is I think really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What is the distance that this works? How far will
this signal go?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, that depends on how many people are using it
in the area.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
So the way that both works, and.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, I'd say a couple of hundred meters at the most,
depending on Now this is what I'm unclear on. So
the way that you know, mesh networks typically work. You know,
let's say you are at the end of the network
right like you're you're let's say you're one hundred and
fifty meters away from me, right, You're at the end,
and then someone else is fifty meters away from there.
Theoretically the network could continue going on forever if those
(03:05):
were inner you know, connected forever. If someone was on
the edge of the network, that can jump to the
next person, you know, the wireless signal can jump to
the next phone. That part is unclear to me. If
this thing, let's say let's say everyone had this on
their phone and it was always on, would the network
just be where every single person is because there's so
many phones everywhere. That part is unclear to me.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Right now, Okay, moving on, and this one is it
always floors me. PayPal is now letting businesses accept crypto
currency directly.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Number one, I've never understood crypto.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Don't have crypto to my grin because when it came out,
I could have bought it for pennies.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
No, I'm sorry, I could have bought lots of it
for a penny.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And now it's what you hit one hundred and twenty
thousand dollars per coin last month. So you know, the
question is if PayPal Pal is doing this, has a
critical mass hit with crypto where it has become a
real internationally recognized currency.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I don't think it's hit critical mass, which is the
interesting part about this, and I think that by PayPal.
You know, I've always said with these cryptos, you know,
there's so many Look, if you want to just delve
into crypto, you can. You know, there's people that know
much a lot about this and they use it, they
invest with it, they you know, trade it, whatever they
want to do with it. But I don't think the
(04:29):
average person is using it to that degree just yet.
Nor do we have a major corporation like an Amazon
that accepts bitcoin or you know, you go into a store,
can you pay with bitcoin? It's still tricky. So I
think the fact that PayPal is launching this pay with
Crypto feature for US merchants. Is actually really interesting because
(04:50):
now you flip a switch and no matter what size
business you are, you can now accept not just Bitcoin,
but over one hundred cryptocurrencies so ethereum, all these other
cryptocurrencies that pop up there, and then once you do
that transaction, you can have that money transferred to US
dollars or what's called a stable coin, which actually has
(05:10):
you've talked about crypto in the past, Bill, how you
don't really understand, like what is it just made out
of thin air? Well, these stable coins actually have money
to back them up, so it's kind of like a
almost like the dollar back when we had gold behind it,
which I don't think we do anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I know we don't have gold deserves.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, yeah, so that we have it just opens this up.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, it doesn't back the dollar. Okay, let's do this.
We can talk about crypto for hours and hours. Rich
Let's go into this humanoid robot at six thousand dollars
fifty nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I don't know if that's cheap or not based on
what it can.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Do, but the Chinese have come up with this don't
you usually see the Japanese way ahead of the game
on robots.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That's a good question. I actually think I've seen more
Chinese robotics companies at CS than Japanese robotics company. So
you know, they're doing a lot over there, and it
just seems like they're pushing forward with this technology. Specifically
this company, I've actually seen their robot in person. It's
called Unit Tree. They had this at CS. It's been
(06:17):
you know, they've been at CS for a couple of
years now, but this two CS ago, I saw a
version of this robot that was basically being shown off
where people were just kicking it and it wouldn't fall over,
and so that was a pretty big deal. And that
actually a video I posted of it went viral. I said,
one of these days, these robots are going to kick back,
and people thought that was kind of silly. But anyway,
(06:39):
now they've released this new R one. This is not
only their cheapest humanoid, but one of the cheapest humanoid
robots yet. Like you said, fifty nine hundred dollars, stands
about four feet tall, weighs about sixty pounds, runs about
an hour on a charge, and it can do all
kinds of things, but it's not really meant for you know,
it's not Rosy the robot. You know, we're getting closer
(07:01):
to that, but this is more for robotics, research, education,
people training stuff. But if you look at the video online,
the capabilities of this robot are already highly advanced. But Bill,
if you want to pay for hands that actually move
like articulating fingers, those are going to cost extra about
five thousand dollars each. So that's clearly a very expensive
(07:23):
aspect of these humanoids.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, what did it do?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well? It does whatever people want it to do. So's
the that's the beauty of this device is that it
is meant for people to play with. See what you
can make this thing do. So maybe you can have
it drive a car. Maybe you can have it lift
a box in your factory and walk it over to
a shelf. The possibilities are endless, and that's why the
idea of a fifty nine hundred dollars robot versus you know,
(07:51):
a ten twenty thousand dollars robot lets people experiment with
what they can program this thing to do, you know,
just for comparisons sake, you know, much more advanced robotics.
Human humanoid robotics devices can cost anywhere between twenty to
one hundred thousand dollars. So this is this is pretty
advanced for the price.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And when you talk about it, you can program it
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Let's say I buy it and I have no technical
skills whatsoever, how do I program this robot?
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Or anybody else is not tech savvy.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Well, it's not going to be for someone that's not
tech savy. This is for someone that knows what they're doing.
It's going to come with a software development kit that
basically allows you to interface with the robot, and you've
got to figure out how to do that, and that's
part of the you know, moving forward in this process
here with these robots.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So it's basically it's in the testing stage or it's
in the development stage, just using people that are willing
to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
That makes sense. How do you say danger Will Robinson
in Chinese?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
By the way, Yeah, danger Will Robinson, That's how you
say it in Chies.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Okay, Uh, I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Know if that if that show was I mean, well,
I don't even know if that's from Is that from
like an old.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Uh yeah, Robbie the robot. Yeah, yeah, loustup in space.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Okay, well you know where everybody had life and uh
it's uh no, I don't have that right that was
was That was Robbie the robot, wasn't it?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
From that. You want to look at there, lost in space,
Lost in space, very very sophisticated robot.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Uh, you'll you'll love it. You'll that you'll be talking
about that forever. All right, we only literally have a
couple of minutes left.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And this is a story uh that I was going
to and didn't get to, but will. And that's Uber
female driver option because there have been so many problems
with Uber drivers and so let's get into that and
the technology, if you will, and uh, how successful you
think it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think it's a great idea. We were just talking
about this the other night with a couple of folks
and yeah, so Uber is testing a women preference choice
in the in the app, so you can get matched
with a female driver. This is for women, not for men,
So don't think about you know, don't be a creep,
but yeah, women drivers can opt in to only get
(10:21):
pickups from other women drivers. And they're launching it in
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit. And it's just a
safety thing so women can feel more comfortable taking a
lift or taking an uber by themselves. And for what
it's worth, Lift has had this feature for a long time,
and all the women that I spoke to, you know,
we were all discussing this on over the weekend. Makes
(10:42):
people feel very comfortable knowing that there's going to be
a female behind the wheel if you are by yourself
as a woman. So look inside your Uber app if
you're a woman and you want that, look in your
settings and see if it's available to you. It is
rolling out, which means not everyone's going to have it instantly.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Okay, Oh, by.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
The way, you're gonna pop for that humanoid robot? Or
can you get k T l A Or I know
you can't get ihearted to pop for it, but how
are you going to get your hands on one?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
You know what, I'm worried about it getting its hands
on me and buthering me, so.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well said, I'm going away from that.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well said, all right, we'll talk again next week tomorrow.
As always, I think today you have done the segment
yet on k T l A. On Instagram, at rich
on Tech website, rich on tech dot TV, and this Saturday,
eleven am to two pm right here on KFI.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Rich You have a good day. Take care.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Thanks Bill,
Okay, we haven't done this in a little while.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Rich on Tech our tech segment Rich every Saturday from
eleven am to two pm right here on KFI. He's
on KTLA every day, Instagram at rich on Tech website,
rich on tech dot TV.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Good morning, Rich, welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Back, Thank you, Bill, Good morning to you. Good to
be back. I mean, Hawaii, it was nice, but this
is better. Oh yeah, that's believable. Oh believed you, no issue.
We believe every word of that one. Okay, a couple
of things I want to share with you and maybe
you'll tell me the truth on this one. Talking about Bluetooth, Okay,
(00:40):
no internet, no Wi Fi or cell signal required.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It has a real potential for disaster.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I thought Bluetooth was just you know, car phone to
you know, your cell phone to the car. I mean,
I ever thought Bluetooth had any distance to it? Am
I wrong on that?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're not wrong on that. There is a it is
a limited distance you know, wireless networking communications profile. So
and that's why it's been used for things like headphones
and connecting to car and you know, Bluetooth audio. But
this is this is truly truly I think transformative. This
is a new app called Bitchat. It came from Twitter
(01:23):
co founder Jack Dorsey. He's done a lot in the
crypto world. He obviously founded Twitter. I interviewed him one.
He's very unique guy, very thoughtful person. But this is
an app that lets you send messages without Wi Fi,
without Internet, without cellular. It just goes on Bluetooth. So
if you have a Bluetooth device like a phone, you
(01:44):
could be an airplane mode and chat with people like
you said, around you. So it uses all of these
phones to create a mesh network. And so depending on
where people are, that mesh network can be bigger or smaller,
depending on how many phones are in the area and
how many people are on this app. But you can chat,
You can you know, do a couple of little silly
(02:06):
things that you know, talk to people like DM people.
You can block people, but it's very basic. But the
potential for this bill in a disaster situation or any
sort of peer to peer chatting situation like let's say
your work does not allow any sort of chat apps,
people can just jump on this and chat to their
hearts content. Because they can't block Wi Fi, they can't
(02:27):
block Bluetooth. So this is I think really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What is the distance that this works? How far will
this signal go?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, that depends on how many people are using it
in the area.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
So the way that both works, and.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, I'd say a couple of hundred meters at the most,
depending on Now this is what I'm unclear on. So
the way that you know, mesh networks typically work. You know,
let's say you are at the end of the network
right like you're you're let's say you're one hundred and
fifty meters away from me, right, You're at the end,
and then someone else is fifty meters away from there.
Theoretically the network could continue going on forever if those
(03:05):
were inner you know, connected forever. If someone was on
the edge of the network, that can jump to the
next person, you know, the wireless signal can jump to
the next phone. That part is unclear to me. If
this thing, let's say let's say everyone had this on
their phone and it was always on, would the network
just be where every single person is because there's so
many phones everywhere. That part is unclear to me.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Right now, Okay, moving on, and this one is it
always floors me. PayPal is now letting businesses accept crypto
currency directly.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Number one, I've never understood crypto.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Don't have crypto to my grin because when it came out,
I could have bought it for pennies.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
No, I'm sorry, I could have bought lots of it
for a penny.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And now it's what you hit one hundred and twenty
thousand dollars per coin last month. So you know, the
question is if PayPal Pal is doing this, has a
critical mass hit with crypto where it has become a
real internationally recognized currency.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I don't think it's hit critical mass, which is the
interesting part about this, and I think that by PayPal.
You know, I've always said with these cryptos, you know,
there's so many Look, if you want to just delve
into crypto, you can. You know, there's people that know
much a lot about this and they use it, they
invest with it, they you know, trade it, whatever they
want to do with it. But I don't think the
(04:29):
average person is using it to that degree just yet.
Nor do we have a major corporation like an Amazon
that accepts bitcoin or you know, you go into a store,
can you pay with bitcoin? It's still tricky. So I
think the fact that PayPal is launching this pay with
Crypto feature for US merchants. Is actually really interesting because
(04:50):
now you flip a switch and no matter what size
business you are, you can now accept not just Bitcoin,
but over one hundred cryptocurrencies so ethereum, all these other
cryptocurrencies that pop up there, and then once you do
that transaction, you can have that money transferred to US
dollars or what's called a stable coin, which actually has
(05:10):
you've talked about crypto in the past, Bill, how you
don't really understand, like what is it just made out
of thin air? Well, these stable coins actually have money
to back them up, so it's kind of like a
almost like the dollar back when we had gold behind it,
which I don't think we do anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I know we don't have gold deserves.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, yeah, so that we have it just opens this up.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, it doesn't back the dollar. Okay, let's do this.
We can talk about crypto for hours and hours. Rich
Let's go into this humanoid robot at six thousand dollars
fifty nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I don't know if that's cheap or not based on
what it can.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Do, but the Chinese have come up with this don't
you usually see the Japanese way ahead of the game
on robots.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
That's a good question. I actually think I've seen more
Chinese robotics companies at CS than Japanese robotics company. So
you know, they're doing a lot over there, and it
just seems like they're pushing forward with this technology. Specifically
this company, I've actually seen their robot in person. It's
called Unit Tree. They had this at CS. It's been
(06:17):
you know, they've been at CS for a couple of
years now, but this two CS ago, I saw a
version of this robot that was basically being shown off
where people were just kicking it and it wouldn't fall over,
and so that was a pretty big deal. And that
actually a video I posted of it went viral. I said,
one of these days, these robots are going to kick back,
and people thought that was kind of silly. But anyway,
(06:39):
now they've released this new R one. This is not
only their cheapest humanoid, but one of the cheapest humanoid
robots yet. Like you said, fifty nine hundred dollars, stands
about four feet tall, weighs about sixty pounds, runs about
an hour on a charge, and it can do all
kinds of things, but it's not really meant for you know,
it's not Rosy the robot. You know, we're getting closer
(07:01):
to that, but this is more for robotics, research, education,
people training stuff. But if you look at the video online,
the capabilities of this robot are already highly advanced. But Bill,
if you want to pay for hands that actually move
like articulating fingers, those are going to cost extra about
five thousand dollars each. So that's clearly a very expensive
(07:23):
aspect of these humanoids.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, what did it do?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well? It does whatever people want it to do. So's
the that's the beauty of this device is that it
is meant for people to play with. See what you
can make this thing do. So maybe you can have
it drive a car. Maybe you can have it lift
a box in your factory and walk it over to
a shelf. The possibilities are endless, and that's why the
idea of a fifty nine hundred dollars robot versus you know,
(07:51):
a ten twenty thousand dollars robot lets people experiment with
what they can program this thing to do, you know,
just for comparisons sake, you know, much more advanced robotics.
Human humanoid robotics devices can cost anywhere between twenty to
one hundred thousand dollars. So this is this is pretty
advanced for the price.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And when you talk about it, you can program it
to do anything.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Let's say I buy it and I have no technical
skills whatsoever, how do I program this robot?
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Or anybody else is not tech savvy.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Well, it's not going to be for someone that's not
tech savy. This is for someone that knows what they're doing.
It's going to come with a software development kit that
basically allows you to interface with the robot, and you've
got to figure out how to do that, and that's
part of the you know, moving forward in this process
here with these robots.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
So it's basically it's in the testing stage or it's
in the development stage, just using people that are willing
to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
That makes sense. How do you say danger Will Robinson
in Chinese?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
By the way, Yeah, danger Will Robinson, That's how you
say it in Chies.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Okay, Uh, I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Know if that if that show was I mean, well,
I don't even know if that's from Is that from
like an old.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Uh yeah, Robbie the robot. Yeah, yeah, loustup in space.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Okay, well you know where everybody had life and uh
it's uh no, I don't have that right that was
was That was Robbie the robot, wasn't it?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
From that. You want to look at there, lost in space,
Lost in space, very very sophisticated robot.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Uh, you'll you'll love it. You'll that you'll be talking
about that forever. All right, we only literally have a
couple of minutes left.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And this is a story uh that I was going
to and didn't get to, but will. And that's Uber
female driver option because there have been so many problems
with Uber drivers and so let's get into that and
the technology, if you will, and uh, how successful you
think it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I think it's a great idea. We were just talking
about this the other night with a couple of folks
and yeah, so Uber is testing a women preference choice
in the in the app, so you can get matched
with a female driver. This is for women, not for men,
So don't think about you know, don't be a creep,
but yeah, women drivers can opt in to only get
(10:21):
pickups from other women drivers. And they're launching it in
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit. And it's just a
safety thing so women can feel more comfortable taking a
lift or taking an uber by themselves. And for what
it's worth, Lift has had this feature for a long time,
and all the women that I spoke to, you know,
we were all discussing this on over the weekend. Makes
(10:42):
people feel very comfortable knowing that there's going to be
a female behind the wheel if you are by yourself
as a woman. So look inside your Uber app if
you're a woman and you want that, look in your
settings and see if it's available to you. It is
rolling out, which means not everyone's going to have it instantly.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Okay, Oh, by.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
The way, you're gonna pop for that humanoid robot? Or
can you get k T l A Or I know
you can't get ihearted to pop for it, but how
are you going to get your hands on one?
Speaker 3 (11:10):
You know what, I'm worried about it getting its hands
on me and buthering me, so.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well said, I'm going away from that.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well said, all right, we'll talk again next week tomorrow.
As always, I think today you have done the segment
yet on k T l A. On Instagram, at rich
on Tech website, rich on tech dot TV, and this Saturday,
eleven am to two pm right here on KFI.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Rich You have a good day. Take care.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Thanks Bill,
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