October 1, 2024 • 25 mins
KFI's own Tech Reporter Rich DeMuro joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Tech Tuesday'! Rich talks about ____. A wave of hoax shooting threats is jolting schools this year. Why dining rooms are disappearing from American homes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listenings KFI AM six forty. The bill handles show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app. And this is KFI
AM six forty bill handle here. It is a Taco Tuesday,
October one. And before we get into Rich real quickly, Neil,
you are broadcasting from the Pakito Moss in Encino Saturday
(00:23):
two to five o'clock. Yes, sir, it's their fortieth anniversary.
It'll be good food.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I will be giving away some FOURK report swag. It'll
be good time haveby.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah. And also KFI is giving away one free Poquito
Moss franchise and that will be you get your own restaurant.
If you are one of the lucky winners. Yeah, no, no, no,
you get you get a lot of people showing up.
You have to betting board. You have to be there
(00:52):
to win. How many people you think would show up?
Rich Tomorrow Tech Tuesday, KTLA and kfi's Tech I. He's
on eleven to two pm every Saturday morning here on
KFI and Instagram, at Rich on Tech website, Rich on
tech dot TV. Good morning Rich, Good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Okay, a couple of fun things. Home Depot has instituted
new door. The glass goes from clear to frosted literally
in seconds. And you've been able to buy these businesses,
and certainly for home use. When I built my house,
they were available. The problem is in those days they
(01:33):
cost about as much as the house to put in.
And so I think this is neat. But why do that?
Wouldn't you want people to look into the store?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, this is so this is actually for your home.
So this is you know, oh, okay, got it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
It's not home depot, it's for your home.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Sorry about that, exactly. Yes, So now they're selling them.
When you had when you got them, or if you
ever got them, they were you know, cost prohibitive and
it was probably like a specialty thing. Now that home
depot as this, and it's at a price point which
is still expensive. You're talking anywhere from eight hundred to
one thousand dollars, but that is way more reasonable than
you would expect for a technology like this.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Oh yeah, when I was looking at it, I mean
it was many thousands of dollars yea, And yeah, so
it's well, my answer was that instead of putting the
frosted glass, I just walked around the house with clothes on.
Oh well, I thought.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You were going to say the opposite, but okay, yeah,
so this this allows you to do both, I guess.
So this is from a company called Feather River. They
call them the switch Door, and basically it's got that
what you were talking about, that smart glass polymer dispersed
liquid crystal. You might have actually seen this, like on
the airplane. They do this a lot where they it's
like they add electrostatic glass.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
You tap it.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Instead of there's a shade on the window, it like
literally just dims the window so you can't see eventually.
So same kind of technology, but this, you know, it's
for your front door, and so you can get this
you can have your door clear during the day, like
when you're sitting you know, in the kitchen or whatever
you want to be able to see outside, and then
at night when you want a little bit more privacy,
you can just either have it on an automation where
(03:13):
it does it in seconds on a schedule, or you
can ask your you know, Google Home or whatever use
an app. But I thought this was pretty cool because
they've been teasing it for a couple of months now.
They just didn't give us the pricing. Now we know
the pricing and availability, and I think it looks awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's still yeah, and it's cheap. And at eight hundred bucks,
I mean, a good door is going to cost you
at least that, So it makes sense. Love the idea.
Matter of fact, I actually may consider it. Frankly, I
may consider it.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I'd love to have when they those solicitors come up
to the door, you just you know, you look at
them right through the glass and just tap that thing
on the app and just have it go completely dark.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, I mean, I don't know about that, because you know,
this is why God invented shotguns, is for solicitors coming
up to the front door in California. No, that's true. See,
that's where you want to live in Texas. I'm not
a big fan of Texas, but man, yeah, when's the
listener to come up to the front door. That's what
you want? All right? And by the way, I am,
(04:13):
you know, I bought a house, you know, and I'm
remodeling it. I'm going to look at home depot for
that front door. That is seriously neat stuff for sure.
All right. Yesterday it was an outage with the major
phone companies and Verizon. Their outage was the biggest and
the best.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
What happened, Well, okay, so the other phone companies thing
I'm not sure about because here's the deal. So what
happens when these when these outages occur is that people
go to this website called downdetector dot com right and
they report that they're having issues. So, of course yesterday,
because Verizon's having issues, people also report that they're having
issues with AT and T T Mobile spectrum. But I
(04:55):
think what happens is it's actually just a Verizon outage.
But people think because they're trying to text people on
other lines, or let's say you're an AT and T customer,
you try to call your friend that's on Verizon, you
just assume you're having a problem. So I do think
this was isolated to Verizon yesterday. And what happened was,
and I was one of these people, all of a sudden,
(05:15):
your phone just started showing SOS in the upper right
hand corner, or it showed no signal bar and you
could not make texts or you could not make calls.
You could not send texts, you could not use your
data unless you were in a Wi Fi area. And
this went on bill for a really long time yesterday,
way longer than that at and T outage we saw
last summer. Service was restored yesterday afternoon, started around two pm,
(05:39):
maybe until about five pm. We still don't know what
the cause is though, I mean Verizon has been very
very quiet. Here's the deal. All these companies love, you know,
they got new deals and free phones and plans. They
love talking to us and advertising to us. But when
something like this happens, we hear nothing. It's like radio silence.
It's like, yes, we know there's an outage. That's all
we can say right now.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And when people phones are out, I mean you just
shut down. I mean your existence is at risk because
we're so reliant on our phones.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, especially if you're in the field. Like let's say,
you know, if you're at home, you're at work where
you have Wi Fi. But if you're someone that's in
the field, like a field rep for something, or someone
that's always in their car traveling around whatever, this was
a real problem. I happen to be out and about
all day yesterday, like literally from like eight am until
three pm, and I literally had no service all day long. Thankfully,
(06:34):
since I test things for a living, I had a
backup service on Mint Mobile, which was working just fine,
but you know, it was really odd to not have
service for that long.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Why SOS in the corner as opposed to SOL great question?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Some people were saying they should rename that, But yeah,
so SOS is is kind of like the new thing
that iPhone is doing, so and I think there's actually
a little bit of explanation there too. So SOS means
that you have no signal from your cell phone company,
but you can still dial nine one one because your
phone will still latch onto a partner company, Like even
(07:11):
if you have Verizon, you can still dial nine one
one and it would go to T Mobile or AT
and T if Verizon was not available. And even if
your phone does not have service, like if you're not
paying your bill or whatever, you can still always dial
nine one one. That's a law here in the US.
Which a new thing the iPhones have built is satellite
over SOS over satellite, so you can actually send a
(07:33):
message or call for help over satellite. I'll be honest.
I tried testing that yesterday and it did not work
because I was in a backyard where I was on
a hill in the mountains, and it just would not
find a clear signal to the satellite.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And that technology, when you talk about satellite phones, is
really high end. But then I'm assuming that Musk's Starlink
has turned that one around completely.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Oh well, so yeah, So if you're on iPhone, they
built out a network with a company I can't remember
the name of, but they've got it on their iPhone
fourteen and above. And then you've got T Mobile is
working with Starlink to do that. Verizon is working with
another company. So basically, I will tell you by the
end of next year, I bet almost every single smartphone
(08:21):
will have the ability to do satellite communications. Mostly right
now just for text messages and emergencies, but eventually we
will see the calls as the technology gets better.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
All right, taking a page out of the Jetsons, and
we all thought that that was going to be way, way,
way in the future, air taxis are actually here. When
are we able to be When are we going to
be able to call one and be George Jetson and
go from A to B?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Well, I think soon. So there's a bunch of companies
working on this technology. They're getting close. The one that
I profiled is called Joby Aviation. They had their air
taxis set up at the They did not fly it
to the grove. They trucked it in in several pieces,
like three main pieces. And this was not necessarily a prototype,
(09:09):
like most of the plane was actually real. And this
is a company out of northern California. So what they're
doing is they're showing this off because they believe that
their air taxi could waste one day whisked people from
like lax to downtown in about eight minutes. This thing
goes about two hundred miles an hour or up to
two hundred miles an hour fully electric, holds four people
(09:30):
plus a pilot. Range is about one hundred miles. So
the idea is that you'd have all these little vertic ports,
you know, vertical airport landing areas in different parts of
this city. So you can have one in the valley
that takes you to Santa Monica, you can have Santa
Monica to downtown, downtown to the airport, airport to Santa Clarita,
you know, all these different places. And of course it's
(09:52):
going to be very expensive as.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, even to the point of cost prohibited because you
have to hire a pilot versus that become a ton
of and that's where it's going to make sense.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, and that's the thing, Bill, These things actually do
fly themselves. They just because the SEC doesn't really have
rules for that just yet. Or sorry FAA, sorry, I'm
thinking my my broadcast brain. FAA doesn't really have rules
for taking people in autonomous flying taxis. So right now,
they're going to start with a pilot that they have
in these things. But obviously we all know the future here.
(10:25):
We are going to be taking these things all over town.
You're gonna be You're gonna go to you know whatever,
Crypto Center or Sofi Stadium, and you know, of course
it's going to be rich people at the beginning, but
eventually it'll trickle down to folks like myself that take Uber.
I mean, Bill, I saw the transition of Uber. So
when I first you know, I used to live in
New York City working there. If you took a Blacktown
(10:47):
car somewhere, it was very expensive, and your company would
pay for it, right, you'd give you this little voucher
and you weren't paying for that.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
When when I came to La Uber first launched very expensive,
but the average person could hail car Blacktown car and
goes different places in the city. And I've watched that
over the last ten years turn into Uber black, which
you could now share a car with someone and go
across the city for like eight bucks if you wanted to,
you can still take the expensive one. I think that's
(11:15):
going to happen here as well.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Huh So, right now, if I get this straight, the
latest technology is one of these air taxis breaking down
into three pieces and trucking itself to wherever you wherever
you're going, Do I have that right? Well?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Look, they and here's the thing about safety and redundancy,
and the other interesting thing about what they're doing is
that it takes off vertically, So it takes off vertically,
it lifts up. Then the propellers actually change from vertical
to horizontal forward facing, and then you know, transitions to
forward flight and then again they transition back up. It
(11:55):
lands vertically. So that's kind of like their secret sauce.
And I'm telling you, Bill, once you see this and
you kind of realize this is this is going to
be going on twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, no, no, buy it. I mean it's just obviously other
than the cost you're taking three people with a pilot.
Of course, that doesn't make any sense financially, so they
have to go beyond that. You've got mag lev trains
that can take you to for example, in China or
in Shanghai, from the airport to city center and that's
(12:25):
seven minutes, where normally it takes two hours to drive in.
But that's from one location, and this is from all
over the city. How do they and I'm assuming that
with it's the same technology that you're looking at self
driving cars. Just they stay out of each other's way.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, And I think obviously I think it's it's you know,
I'm not an engineer, but I think it's probably easier
to engineer a self flying taxi because there's not as
many things up once you're in the air. I mean,
there's nothing in front of you now. Obviously, if there's
millions of these things in the air in the future
and they're all on the line, we might imagine like
a freeway in the sky. But at the beginning, it's
(13:03):
not gonna be like that. And even if it is,
since we are building something from the ground up, you know,
there's a framework in place, right, these will be able
to talk to each other. You don't have random people
just driving their cars like you do right now. A
self driving car has to think of a million and
one possibilities, whereas this will not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And what are they are excited about this noise? Am I?
I am too because I love this kind of technology.
I've been in favor of autonomous cars forever. And once
the switchover and it's gonna I'm not gonna be alive.
I don't think you're gonna be alive until the full turnover.
Because even when it's mandatory that self driving cars are
the law, you're still gonna have twenty years of people
driving on the freeway with their normal you know, the
(13:45):
cars that don't have the self driving aspect to it.
But can you imagine self driving cars that are two
feet from each other, driving at sixty five miles an hour,
perfectly safe lane changes, et cetera. Instantly you wouldn't have
grid luck.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, I mean, and they've done a million studies where
even putting one of these type you know, air taxis
into the air. You know, once you get these things
up and running, obviously with four people at a clip,
it's not really gonna make a huge impact. But anytime
you can take any sort of little, tiny relief off
of these roads that we have that are so congested.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
It does make a difference.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I know Uber does studies about their cars making a difference.
I think that we are on the verge of sort
of unlocking our nation cities with new technology. It's not
gonna be overnight, but I do think we are on
the verge of this.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
All right, Rich, thank you, Miche'll catch you this Saturday
from eleven to two and of course tomorrow morning on KTLA.
You have a good one, Thanks Bill, Take care, Rich.
All right. Unfortunately, we're gonna get a little serious, or
I'm gonna get a little serious for the moment. It
just has to do with school shootings. And it's not
just the school shootings. It's the number of hoax calls
(14:58):
that are coming in which every single school district, every
single school has to take very very seriously, even the
ones that are obviously hoaxes, because they can be imagine
going the other way, you know what, we didn't take
it seriously, and kids or administrators, teachers get killed and
those are through the roof. Now. The number of these hoaxes,
(15:23):
usually by students, ninety percent of the time ninety five
percent of the times, and when they're caught, oh, I
was just joking. It was only a joke. And what
do you do with an eleven year old? And so
it's they're trying to figure out a way of dealing
(15:44):
with them, and in reality, they really can't because they
can't take a chance even if they you know, questions
are asked and it sort of looks like it's an
obvious hoax, but they can't take a chance, so they
a hoax comes in, school has a shut down or
it has to be evacuated. And you got some twelve
year old kids saying, oh, it's just a joke, you
(16:07):
big deal. And then one of the reasons they goes
so crazy so quickly is you now have TikTok, you
have Instagram, which spreads the word of this threat instantly,
and you have parents now that have kids that are
in that school that are scared to death because there
are enough of these app these these real shootings like
(16:28):
September fourth, right, the school shooting in Windsor, Georgia where
two kids and two teachers were killed. And then you
have the copyright or the copycat, and the volume today
is growing by leaps and bounds. I had the door open.
I'm at home, so let me close the window there
because the trash guys are here. Hold on a minute,
(16:50):
Oh god, then what the hell man, what I'm in
my home studio. Did you hear the trash guys outside? No?
Could you hear them? Yes? Okay, I just it's not that.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I'm worried about the other trash you're airing right now.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
That this, unfortunately is not trash, Neil. This is a legitimate,
unfortunate offshoot of the school shootings, not in and of themselves,
but also the hoaxes that are coming down the copycats.
Trust me, I have a young boy in school. I get.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I get these things, and they do happen everywhere, right.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And it's even they stories of misunderstanding. For example, there
is one story out of a Kansas City, Missouri, and
this had to do with the safety team that instantly
is called whenever there is even the thought the hint
of a school attack. So there was a TikTok post
(17:50):
that was that was posted and it was about Lakeview
Middle School and it wasn't even a threat. It was
a crop list of Jorge Just schools targeted by the
state's Education Department for extra academic help. And these schools
were targeted for help. And all you have to do
(18:14):
is use the word targeted. That's like going to the
airport and as you're standing in line at the TSA checkpoint,
you and whoever you're with start talking about a movie
that you've just seen and you say it's a bomb.
I would never see that movie again. Try doing that
and see what happens. That's the point. Okay, now we're
(18:41):
gonna have fun. Enough of that, all right, Okay, so
now I want to end on a Taco Tuesday with
a story about dining rooms. One of the things I've
always enjoyed. As you may or may not know, I
worked my way, if you want to call it, worked
my way through law school. I had a construction business,
and I build homes badly, I might add, And of
(19:04):
course it went under because I've had a few businesses
that have been spectacular failures in my time, and I'm
very proud of those. In the meantime, I would build.
Whenever I built a house, a dining room, a formal
dining room, because that was the thing my house. When
we built a Persian palace, formal dining room, of which
I use twice a year at best. And so why
(19:30):
are they disappearing? And let me tell you they are disappearing.
Even dining areas are disappearing in new housing for a
couple of reasons. First of all, they want more housing
in smaller areas the density and people want as much
square footage as possible, and dining rooms much less dining areas.
(19:54):
Dining rooms are a waste of time. People don't use
them that much. I use a you know, our kitchen.
That's what people do. They take these great rooms, kitchen
connected to a dining area, connected to a living area,
and that's the way we live. So dining rooms have
completely disappeared. There's almost no new housing built. I mean,
(20:17):
if you're building a huge, enormous house, if you're building
four thousand and six thousand square feed or buying one,
of course there'll be a dining room in it. But
the one I have and then my new place has
a dining room which I'll never use because the house
is twelve years old. And what I have to do
is I have to buy a dining room table. I
have to buy a credenza to put dishes and crap in,
(20:39):
and then the chairs, and I'll never use it. I'll
never use it, you know. Bill.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
We got rid of our dining room when Max was
born and we used it as a place for his
crib and playthings, and to this day it's become a playroom.
And then my brother and his husband they got rid
of their dining room and made it into a full
working speakeasy, a full bar, their own private speakeasy in
(21:07):
their home.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Because you must don't use them anymore, No, no one
uses them now. The one part I understand that, The
one part that as I read this story and this
is out of the Atlantic, I love the Atlantic. We
get a lot of stuff out of the Atlantic, is
that dining areas, that kitchen table has disappeared because people
(21:28):
like to just sit on couches and they watch TV
and they that's the way people sort of congregate. And
you sit there with a I guess some kind of
tray on your lap, or even the old TV trays
I remember growing up, and that's in the days when
(21:51):
you were the remote control. I remember being the remote control,
change the channel, make it louder, oh okay, And you
hated that, and everybody would sit at the couch with
a TV dinner which were spectacular. I remember Swanson's TV
dinners when they were twelve for a quarter or something.
(22:12):
Absolutely the cheapest, crappiest food in the world. But you
love them because they had that little dessert and the
entree and just wonderful because they were so bad. But
that was the way people lived and the way people worked.
And in those times, by the way, they did have
dining rooms, which no one ever used. And so we're
(22:36):
coming back. I guess what goes around goes round. You know,
it all comes back, And now we're going back to
the same thing where people are simply more comfortable and
sitting around in a dining non dining area, just the
room where they watched TV and congregate, which makes a
lot of sense when you think about it, because well,
(22:58):
I to me a breakfast table in that area or
a small dining table off the kitchen. I can't imagine
not having one of those, but getting rid of the
dining room. And by the way, it's disappearing so quickly,
your head is spinning. They will be gone. Nobody is
building dining rooms anymore. You can't get new housing, no apartments.
(23:18):
They're building in so many new new housing doesn't don't
have dining rooms.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Well, how you know, how long have I known you?
And at the Persian Palace, I can remember maybe twice
on high holidays eating in your dining room. Otherwise it
was the kitchen nook.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, yeah, we always ate in the kitchen. And by
the way, that it was a big dining room. So
I had a table built for that dining room. And
now since it's gone, I don't know what the hell
to do. It's being stored. Marjorie put it someplace, so
I have no idea. And it's bold on it. It's
an adu. You mean you talk about the table itself. Yeah, yeah,
(23:57):
you know it's big. No, it's big, and it was
build for a big room, so you know, no one
can use it. And so there I am step on
Craigslist for three dollars. By the way, that's not true
if you go to craigslist. All right, guys, we are finished.
So let's start with phone calls eight seven seven, five
two zero eleven fifty. I'll be taking calls off the air.
(24:20):
I start right after I get off the off the air.
A few minutes and the phone calls start. Do it
for about half an hour. Forty minutes, so marginal legal
advice eight seven seven to five to two zero eleven
fifty off the air, and quite often it's difficult to
get in. On Saturday, we went two straight hours without
anybody being able to get in. The lines were jammed,
(24:41):
So take advantage of it now. And so we have
no commercials, we have no breaks, we have no news,
we have no weather, and we have no patience with
your phone calls. So that gets really easy. All right,
We're done. Let's it guys. Tonight is the debate, the
vice presidential debate. We'll talk about that tomorrow. The incursion
(25:02):
in Israel or into Lebanon from Israel goes on, so
we have a lot to talk about over the next
day or two. Tomorrow morning wake up call with Amy,
Neil and I jump in at six o'clock and we're
all together at nine and of course and produced the
show and Kono does whatever the hell he does with
the buttons over there. This is KFI AM six forty
(25:24):
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app,
You're listenings KFI AM six forty. The bill handles show
on demand on the iHeartRadio app. And this is KFI
AM six forty bill handle here. It is a Taco Tuesday,
October one. And before we get into Rich real quickly, Neil,
you are broadcasting from the Pakito Moss in Encino Saturday
(00:23):
two to five o'clock. Yes, sir, it's their fortieth anniversary.
It'll be good food.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I will be giving away some FOURK report swag. It'll
be good time haveby.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah. And also KFI is giving away one free Poquito
Moss franchise and that will be you get your own restaurant.
If you are one of the lucky winners. Yeah, no, no, no,
you get you get a lot of people showing up.
You have to betting board. You have to be there
(00:52):
to win. How many people you think would show up?
Rich Tomorrow Tech Tuesday, KTLA and kfi's Tech I. He's
on eleven to two pm every Saturday morning here on
KFI and Instagram, at Rich on Tech website, Rich on
tech dot TV. Good morning Rich, Good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Okay, a couple of fun things. Home Depot has instituted
new door. The glass goes from clear to frosted literally
in seconds. And you've been able to buy these businesses,
and certainly for home use. When I built my house,
they were available. The problem is in those days they
(01:33):
cost about as much as the house to put in.
And so I think this is neat. But why do that?
Wouldn't you want people to look into the store?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Well, this is so this is actually for your home.
So this is you know, oh, okay, got it.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
It's not home depot, it's for your home.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Sorry about that, exactly. Yes, So now they're selling them.
When you had when you got them, or if you
ever got them, they were you know, cost prohibitive and
it was probably like a specialty thing. Now that home
depot as this, and it's at a price point which
is still expensive. You're talking anywhere from eight hundred to
one thousand dollars, but that is way more reasonable than
you would expect for a technology like this.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Oh yeah, when I was looking at it, I mean
it was many thousands of dollars yea, And yeah, so
it's well, my answer was that instead of putting the
frosted glass, I just walked around the house with clothes on.
Oh well, I thought.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You were going to say the opposite, but okay, yeah,
so this this allows you to do both, I guess.
So this is from a company called Feather River. They
call them the switch Door, and basically it's got that
what you were talking about, that smart glass polymer dispersed
liquid crystal. You might have actually seen this, like on
the airplane. They do this a lot where they it's
like they add electrostatic glass.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
You tap it.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Instead of there's a shade on the window, it like
literally just dims the window so you can't see eventually.
So same kind of technology, but this, you know, it's
for your front door, and so you can get this
you can have your door clear during the day, like
when you're sitting you know, in the kitchen or whatever
you want to be able to see outside, and then
at night when you want a little bit more privacy,
you can just either have it on an automation where
(03:13):
it does it in seconds on a schedule, or you
can ask your you know, Google Home or whatever use
an app. But I thought this was pretty cool because
they've been teasing it for a couple of months now.
They just didn't give us the pricing. Now we know
the pricing and availability, and I think it looks awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's still yeah, and it's cheap. And at eight hundred bucks,
I mean, a good door is going to cost you
at least that, So it makes sense. Love the idea.
Matter of fact, I actually may consider it. Frankly, I
may consider it.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I'd love to have when they those solicitors come up
to the door, you just you know, you look at
them right through the glass and just tap that thing
on the app and just have it go completely dark.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, I mean, I don't know about that, because you know,
this is why God invented shotguns, is for solicitors coming
up to the front door in California. No, that's true. See,
that's where you want to live in Texas. I'm not
a big fan of Texas, but man, yeah, when's the
listener to come up to the front door. That's what
you want? All right? And by the way, I am,
(04:13):
you know, I bought a house, you know, and I'm
remodeling it. I'm going to look at home depot for
that front door. That is seriously neat stuff for sure.
All right. Yesterday it was an outage with the major
phone companies and Verizon. Their outage was the biggest and
the best.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
What happened, Well, okay, so the other phone companies thing
I'm not sure about because here's the deal. So what
happens when these when these outages occur is that people
go to this website called downdetector dot com right and
they report that they're having issues. So, of course yesterday,
because Verizon's having issues, people also report that they're having
issues with AT and T T Mobile spectrum. But I
(04:55):
think what happens is it's actually just a Verizon outage.
But people think because they're trying to text people on
other lines, or let's say you're an AT and T customer,
you try to call your friend that's on Verizon, you
just assume you're having a problem. So I do think
this was isolated to Verizon yesterday. And what happened was,
and I was one of these people, all of a sudden,
(05:15):
your phone just started showing SOS in the upper right
hand corner, or it showed no signal bar and you
could not make texts or you could not make calls.
You could not send texts, you could not use your
data unless you were in a Wi Fi area. And
this went on bill for a really long time yesterday,
way longer than that at and T outage we saw
last summer. Service was restored yesterday afternoon, started around two pm,
(05:39):
maybe until about five pm. We still don't know what
the cause is though, I mean Verizon has been very
very quiet. Here's the deal. All these companies love, you know,
they got new deals and free phones and plans. They
love talking to us and advertising to us. But when
something like this happens, we hear nothing. It's like radio silence.
It's like, yes, we know there's an outage. That's all
we can say right now.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And when people phones are out, I mean you just
shut down. I mean your existence is at risk because
we're so reliant on our phones.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, especially if you're in the field. Like let's say,
you know, if you're at home, you're at work where
you have Wi Fi. But if you're someone that's in
the field, like a field rep for something, or someone
that's always in their car traveling around whatever, this was
a real problem. I happen to be out and about
all day yesterday, like literally from like eight am until
three pm, and I literally had no service all day long. Thankfully,
(06:34):
since I test things for a living, I had a
backup service on Mint Mobile, which was working just fine,
but you know, it was really odd to not have
service for that long.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Why SOS in the corner as opposed to SOL great question?
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Some people were saying they should rename that, But yeah,
so SOS is is kind of like the new thing
that iPhone is doing, so and I think there's actually
a little bit of explanation there too. So SOS means
that you have no signal from your cell phone company,
but you can still dial nine one one because your
phone will still latch onto a partner company, Like even
(07:11):
if you have Verizon, you can still dial nine one
one and it would go to T Mobile or AT
and T if Verizon was not available. And even if
your phone does not have service, like if you're not
paying your bill or whatever, you can still always dial
nine one one. That's a law here in the US.
Which a new thing the iPhones have built is satellite
over SOS over satellite, so you can actually send a
(07:33):
message or call for help over satellite. I'll be honest.
I tried testing that yesterday and it did not work
because I was in a backyard where I was on
a hill in the mountains, and it just would not
find a clear signal to the satellite.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And that technology, when you talk about satellite phones, is
really high end. But then I'm assuming that Musk's Starlink
has turned that one around completely.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Oh well, so yeah, So if you're on iPhone, they
built out a network with a company I can't remember
the name of, but they've got it on their iPhone
fourteen and above. And then you've got T Mobile is
working with Starlink to do that. Verizon is working with
another company. So basically, I will tell you by the
end of next year, I bet almost every single smartphone
(08:21):
will have the ability to do satellite communications. Mostly right
now just for text messages and emergencies, but eventually we
will see the calls as the technology gets better.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
All right, taking a page out of the Jetsons, and
we all thought that that was going to be way, way,
way in the future, air taxis are actually here. When
are we able to be When are we going to
be able to call one and be George Jetson and
go from A to B?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Well, I think soon. So there's a bunch of companies
working on this technology. They're getting close. The one that
I profiled is called Joby Aviation. They had their air
taxis set up at the They did not fly it
to the grove. They trucked it in in several pieces,
like three main pieces. And this was not necessarily a prototype,
(09:09):
like most of the plane was actually real. And this
is a company out of northern California. So what they're
doing is they're showing this off because they believe that
their air taxi could waste one day whisked people from
like lax to downtown in about eight minutes. This thing
goes about two hundred miles an hour or up to
two hundred miles an hour fully electric, holds four people
(09:30):
plus a pilot. Range is about one hundred miles. So
the idea is that you'd have all these little vertic ports,
you know, vertical airport landing areas in different parts of
this city. So you can have one in the valley
that takes you to Santa Monica, you can have Santa
Monica to downtown, downtown to the airport, airport to Santa Clarita,
you know, all these different places. And of course it's
(09:52):
going to be very expensive as.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, even to the point of cost prohibited because you
have to hire a pilot versus that become a ton
of and that's where it's going to make sense.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, and that's the thing, Bill, These things actually do
fly themselves. They just because the SEC doesn't really have
rules for that just yet. Or sorry FAA, sorry, I'm
thinking my my broadcast brain. FAA doesn't really have rules
for taking people in autonomous flying taxis. So right now,
they're going to start with a pilot that they have
in these things. But obviously we all know the future here.
(10:25):
We are going to be taking these things all over town.
You're gonna be You're gonna go to you know whatever,
Crypto Center or Sofi Stadium, and you know, of course
it's going to be rich people at the beginning, but
eventually it'll trickle down to folks like myself that take Uber.
I mean, Bill, I saw the transition of Uber. So
when I first you know, I used to live in
New York City working there. If you took a Blacktown
(10:47):
car somewhere, it was very expensive, and your company would
pay for it, right, you'd give you this little voucher
and you weren't paying for that.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
When when I came to La Uber first launched very expensive,
but the average person could hail car Blacktown car and
goes different places in the city. And I've watched that
over the last ten years turn into Uber black, which
you could now share a car with someone and go
across the city for like eight bucks if you wanted to,
you can still take the expensive one. I think that's
(11:15):
going to happen here as well.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Huh So, right now, if I get this straight, the
latest technology is one of these air taxis breaking down
into three pieces and trucking itself to wherever you wherever
you're going, Do I have that right? Well?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Look, they and here's the thing about safety and redundancy,
and the other interesting thing about what they're doing is
that it takes off vertically, So it takes off vertically,
it lifts up. Then the propellers actually change from vertical
to horizontal forward facing, and then you know, transitions to
forward flight and then again they transition back up. It
(11:55):
lands vertically. So that's kind of like their secret sauce.
And I'm telling you, Bill, once you see this and
you kind of realize this is this is going to
be going on twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, no, no, buy it. I mean it's just obviously other
than the cost you're taking three people with a pilot.
Of course, that doesn't make any sense financially, so they
have to go beyond that. You've got mag lev trains
that can take you to for example, in China or
in Shanghai, from the airport to city center and that's
(12:25):
seven minutes, where normally it takes two hours to drive in.
But that's from one location, and this is from all
over the city. How do they and I'm assuming that
with it's the same technology that you're looking at self
driving cars. Just they stay out of each other's way.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
Yeah, And I think obviously I think it's it's you know,
I'm not an engineer, but I think it's probably easier
to engineer a self flying taxi because there's not as
many things up once you're in the air. I mean,
there's nothing in front of you now. Obviously, if there's
millions of these things in the air in the future
and they're all on the line, we might imagine like
a freeway in the sky. But at the beginning, it's
(13:03):
not gonna be like that. And even if it is,
since we are building something from the ground up, you know,
there's a framework in place, right, these will be able
to talk to each other. You don't have random people
just driving their cars like you do right now. A
self driving car has to think of a million and
one possibilities, whereas this will not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And what are they are excited about this noise? Am I?
I am too because I love this kind of technology.
I've been in favor of autonomous cars forever. And once
the switchover and it's gonna I'm not gonna be alive.
I don't think you're gonna be alive until the full turnover.
Because even when it's mandatory that self driving cars are
the law, you're still gonna have twenty years of people
driving on the freeway with their normal you know, the
(13:45):
cars that don't have the self driving aspect to it.
But can you imagine self driving cars that are two
feet from each other, driving at sixty five miles an hour,
perfectly safe lane changes, et cetera. Instantly you wouldn't have
grid luck.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, I mean, and they've done a million studies where
even putting one of these type you know, air taxis
into the air. You know, once you get these things
up and running, obviously with four people at a clip,
it's not really gonna make a huge impact. But anytime
you can take any sort of little, tiny relief off
of these roads that we have that are so congested.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
It does make a difference.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I know Uber does studies about their cars making a difference.
I think that we are on the verge of sort
of unlocking our nation cities with new technology. It's not
gonna be overnight, but I do think we are on
the verge of this.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
All right, Rich, thank you, Miche'll catch you this Saturday
from eleven to two and of course tomorrow morning on KTLA.
You have a good one, Thanks Bill, Take care, Rich.
All right. Unfortunately, we're gonna get a little serious, or
I'm gonna get a little serious for the moment. It
just has to do with school shootings. And it's not
just the school shootings. It's the number of hoax calls
(14:58):
that are coming in which every single school district, every
single school has to take very very seriously, even the
ones that are obviously hoaxes, because they can be imagine
going the other way, you know what, we didn't take
it seriously, and kids or administrators, teachers get killed and
those are through the roof. Now. The number of these hoaxes,
(15:23):
usually by students, ninety percent of the time ninety five
percent of the times, and when they're caught, oh, I
was just joking. It was only a joke. And what
do you do with an eleven year old? And so
it's they're trying to figure out a way of dealing
(15:44):
with them, and in reality, they really can't because they
can't take a chance even if they you know, questions
are asked and it sort of looks like it's an
obvious hoax, but they can't take a chance, so they
a hoax comes in, school has a shut down or
it has to be evacuated. And you got some twelve
year old kids saying, oh, it's just a joke, you
(16:07):
big deal. And then one of the reasons they goes
so crazy so quickly is you now have TikTok, you
have Instagram, which spreads the word of this threat instantly,
and you have parents now that have kids that are
in that school that are scared to death because there
are enough of these app these these real shootings like
(16:28):
September fourth, right, the school shooting in Windsor, Georgia where
two kids and two teachers were killed. And then you
have the copyright or the copycat, and the volume today
is growing by leaps and bounds. I had the door open.
I'm at home, so let me close the window there
because the trash guys are here. Hold on a minute,
(16:50):
Oh god, then what the hell man, what I'm in
my home studio. Did you hear the trash guys outside? No?
Could you hear them? Yes? Okay, I just it's not that.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I'm worried about the other trash you're airing right now.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
That this, unfortunately is not trash, Neil. This is a legitimate,
unfortunate offshoot of the school shootings, not in and of themselves,
but also the hoaxes that are coming down the copycats.
Trust me, I have a young boy in school. I get.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I get these things, and they do happen everywhere, right.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And it's even they stories of misunderstanding. For example, there
is one story out of a Kansas City, Missouri, and
this had to do with the safety team that instantly
is called whenever there is even the thought the hint
of a school attack. So there was a TikTok post
(17:50):
that was that was posted and it was about Lakeview
Middle School and it wasn't even a threat. It was
a crop list of Jorge Just schools targeted by the
state's Education Department for extra academic help. And these schools
were targeted for help. And all you have to do
(18:14):
is use the word targeted. That's like going to the
airport and as you're standing in line at the TSA checkpoint,
you and whoever you're with start talking about a movie
that you've just seen and you say it's a bomb.
I would never see that movie again. Try doing that
and see what happens. That's the point. Okay, now we're
(18:41):
gonna have fun. Enough of that, all right, Okay, so
now I want to end on a Taco Tuesday with
a story about dining rooms. One of the things I've
always enjoyed. As you may or may not know, I
worked my way, if you want to call it, worked
my way through law school. I had a construction business,
and I build homes badly, I might add, And of
(19:04):
course it went under because I've had a few businesses
that have been spectacular failures in my time, and I'm
very proud of those. In the meantime, I would build.
Whenever I built a house, a dining room, a formal
dining room, because that was the thing my house. When
we built a Persian palace, formal dining room, of which
I use twice a year at best. And so why
(19:30):
are they disappearing? And let me tell you they are disappearing.
Even dining areas are disappearing in new housing for a
couple of reasons. First of all, they want more housing
in smaller areas the density and people want as much
square footage as possible, and dining rooms much less dining areas.
(19:54):
Dining rooms are a waste of time. People don't use
them that much. I use a you know, our kitchen.
That's what people do. They take these great rooms, kitchen
connected to a dining area, connected to a living area,
and that's the way we live. So dining rooms have
completely disappeared. There's almost no new housing built. I mean,
(20:17):
if you're building a huge, enormous house, if you're building
four thousand and six thousand square feed or buying one,
of course there'll be a dining room in it. But
the one I have and then my new place has
a dining room which I'll never use because the house
is twelve years old. And what I have to do
is I have to buy a dining room table. I
have to buy a credenza to put dishes and crap in,
(20:39):
and then the chairs, and I'll never use it. I'll
never use it, you know. Bill.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
We got rid of our dining room when Max was
born and we used it as a place for his
crib and playthings, and to this day it's become a playroom.
And then my brother and his husband they got rid
of their dining room and made it into a full
working speakeasy, a full bar, their own private speakeasy in
(21:07):
their home.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Because you must don't use them anymore, No, no one
uses them now. The one part I understand that, The
one part that as I read this story and this
is out of the Atlantic, I love the Atlantic. We
get a lot of stuff out of the Atlantic, is
that dining areas, that kitchen table has disappeared because people
(21:28):
like to just sit on couches and they watch TV
and they that's the way people sort of congregate. And
you sit there with a I guess some kind of
tray on your lap, or even the old TV trays
I remember growing up, and that's in the days when
(21:51):
you were the remote control. I remember being the remote control,
change the channel, make it louder, oh okay, And you
hated that, and everybody would sit at the couch with
a TV dinner which were spectacular. I remember Swanson's TV
dinners when they were twelve for a quarter or something.
(22:12):
Absolutely the cheapest, crappiest food in the world. But you
love them because they had that little dessert and the
entree and just wonderful because they were so bad. But
that was the way people lived and the way people worked.
And in those times, by the way, they did have
dining rooms, which no one ever used. And so we're
(22:36):
coming back. I guess what goes around goes round. You know,
it all comes back, And now we're going back to
the same thing where people are simply more comfortable and
sitting around in a dining non dining area, just the
room where they watched TV and congregate, which makes a
lot of sense when you think about it, because well,
(22:58):
I to me a breakfast table in that area or
a small dining table off the kitchen. I can't imagine
not having one of those, but getting rid of the
dining room. And by the way, it's disappearing so quickly,
your head is spinning. They will be gone. Nobody is
building dining rooms anymore. You can't get new housing, no apartments.
(23:18):
They're building in so many new new housing doesn't don't
have dining rooms.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Well, how you know, how long have I known you?
And at the Persian Palace, I can remember maybe twice
on high holidays eating in your dining room. Otherwise it
was the kitchen nook.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, yeah, we always ate in the kitchen. And by
the way, that it was a big dining room. So
I had a table built for that dining room. And
now since it's gone, I don't know what the hell
to do. It's being stored. Marjorie put it someplace, so
I have no idea. And it's bold on it. It's
an adu. You mean you talk about the table itself. Yeah, yeah,
(23:57):
you know it's big. No, it's big, and it was
build for a big room, so you know, no one
can use it. And so there I am step on
Craigslist for three dollars. By the way, that's not true
if you go to craigslist. All right, guys, we are finished.
So let's start with phone calls eight seven seven, five
two zero eleven fifty. I'll be taking calls off the air.
(24:20):
I start right after I get off the off the air.
A few minutes and the phone calls start. Do it
for about half an hour. Forty minutes, so marginal legal
advice eight seven seven to five to two zero eleven
fifty off the air, and quite often it's difficult to
get in. On Saturday, we went two straight hours without
anybody being able to get in. The lines were jammed,
(24:41):
So take advantage of it now. And so we have
no commercials, we have no breaks, we have no news,
we have no weather, and we have no patience with
your phone calls. So that gets really easy. All right,
We're done. Let's it guys. Tonight is the debate, the
vice presidential debate. We'll talk about that tomorrow. The incursion
(25:02):
in Israel or into Lebanon from Israel goes on, so
we have a lot to talk about over the next
day or two. Tomorrow morning wake up call with Amy,
Neil and I jump in at six o'clock and we're
all together at nine and of course and produced the
show and Kono does whatever the hell he does with
the buttons over there. This is KFI AM six forty
(25:24):
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app,
The Bill Handel Show News
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