July 29, 2025 • 25 mins
(July 29,2025)
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. Welcome to the grocery store where your prices change 100x a day. Brutal punishments are being meted out to Russian soldiers no longer willing to fight for Putin.
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. Welcome to the grocery store where your prices change 100x a day. Brutal punishments are being meted out to Russian soldiers no longer willing to fight for Putin.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty. You are listening to the Bill Handle show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey bye, AM six forty Bill Handle Here. It is
a Tuesday morning, Taco Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
It is a July twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're almost done with the month and some of the
big stories we're looking at. Is President Trump still dealing
with this Epstein business said he ended his friendship with
Epstein and threw him out of mar A Lago after
Epstein betrayed him by hiring people away from mar A Lago. Okay,
(00:49):
we'll see what happens. This story changes day by day.
How unusual. Okay, we haven't done this in a little while.
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 3 (01:09):
Good morning, Rich, welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
A couple of things I want to share with you
and maybe you'll tell me the truth on this one. Uh,
talking about Bluetooth, Okay, no Internet, no Wi Fi or
cell signal required. It has a real potential for disaster.
I thought Bluetooth was just you know, car phone to
(01:46):
you know, your cell phone to the car. I mean
I never thought bluetooth had any distance to it. Am
I wrong on that?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Uh? 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
(02:16):
Twitter co founder Jack Dorsey. He's done a lot in
the crypto world. He obviously founded Twitter. I interviewed him.
One'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
(02:38):
can 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
(02:59):
silly things, 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,
(03:21):
they can't block Bluetooth. So this is I think really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
What is the distance that this works? How far will
this signal go?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Well, that depends on how many people are using it
in the area.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
So okay, the way that both works.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And yeah, I'd say a couple 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,
(03:55):
the network could continue going on forever if those were
inner you know, connect 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
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
(04:17):
part is unclear to me.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Right now, Okay, moving on, and this one is it
always floors me. PayPal is now letting businesses except crypto
currency directly.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Number one, I've never understood crypto.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Don't have crypto to my grin because when it came
out I could have bought it for pennies. No, I'm sorry,
I could have bought lots of it for a penny.
And now it's what you hit one hundred and twenty
thousand dollars per coin last month. So you know, the
question is if pay Pal is doing this, has a
(04:55):
critical mass hit with crypto where it has become a
real Internet actually recognize currency.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
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
(05:23):
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
(05:44):
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
(06:04):
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 3 (06:19):
I know we don't have gold deserve.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, so we have, so it just opens this up.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, it doesn't back the dollar. Okay, let's do this.
We can talk about crypto for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Rich, Let's go into this humanoid robot at six thousand
dollars fifty nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I don't know if that's cheap or not based on
what it can do.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But the Chinese have come up with this, don't you
usually see the Japanese way ahead of the game on robots.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's a good question. I actually think I've seen more
Chinese robotics companies at CS than Japanese robotics companies, 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 Unitree. They had this at CS. It's been you know,
(07:11):
they've been at CS for a couple of years now,
but this two CSS 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,
(07:33):
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
(07:55):
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
(08:17):
aspect of these humanoids.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, what do it do?
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Well? It does whatever people want it to do. So
that'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
(08:44):
you know, 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 any between
twenty to one hundred thousand dollars. So this is this
is pretty advanced for the price.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And when you talk about it, you can program it
to do anything. Let's say I buy it and I
have no technical skills whatsoever, how do I program this robot?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Or anybody else is not tech savvy.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well, it's not going to be for someone that's not
tech savvy. 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.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
With these robots.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
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. That makes sense. How do you
say danger Will Robinson in Chinese?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
By the way, Yeah, danger Will Robinson.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
That's how you say in Chinese.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Okay, I don't know if that if that show was
I mean well, I mean know if that's from Is
that from like an old uh.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah, Robbie the Robot or yeah, yeah, lovestup in space? Okay,
well you.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
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 3 (10:17):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
From that.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
You want to look at that.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It's lost in space, Lost in space, very very sophisticated robot.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Uh you'll you'll love it. You'll that you'll be talking
about that forever. All right.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
We only literally have a couple of minutes left. 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.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Going to be.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I think that'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
(11:15):
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 I spoke to, you know,
we were all discussing this on over the weekend. Makes
(11:36):
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 3 (11:52):
Okay, Oh, by the way, you get to pop for
that humanoid robot?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Or can you get KTLA or I know you can
get iehearted to pop for it? But how are you
going to get your hands on one?
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know what, I'm worried about it getting its hands
on me and buthering me.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So well said from that, Well said, all right, we'll
talk again next week tomorrow. As always, I think today
you have done as the segment yet on KTLA, on Instagram,
at rich on tech website, richon tech dot TV, and
this Saturday, eleven am to two pm right here on KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Rich you have a good day, Take care, thanks Bill.
All right, now going.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Into dynamic pricing, as I promoed this segment just as
we are ending the last segment. Dynamic pricing is something
we live with. Airline tickets change day to day, depending
on what time of day, depending on how many seats
are available. Hotels that always changes the price of hotels.
(12:57):
Disneyland has dynamic pricing. You never know, well, it changes
day to day. How about this? How about dynamic pricing
for groceries. In Norway, there is a grocery chain called
Rima one thousand and it uses electronic shelf labels to
(13:19):
change prices on what's on the shelf up to one
hundred times a day to match competitors or beat their prices,
and some US lawmakers and consumers consumers fear that these
electronic shelf labels will enable surge pricing, although the argument
(13:41):
from the stores it's actually the other way, and at
this point Kroger Whole Foods say they don't plan on
using them for dynamic pricing.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
What it is is, it's really easy.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It makes a lot more sense for the stores instead
of putting paper stickers on items or changing the price
on the shelf itself. That the part of the shelf
where you can slip in the price. That if there
are electronic if there's a little screen that changes the price,
that makes a lot of sense for them, and it
(14:16):
tells you about discounts that are available or coupons.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I mean, that's easy to do.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
But you've got big grocery chains out there, starting with
Rima one thousand say they're implementing these digital labels for
efficiency to fight fight food waste with discounts. I mean,
the technology is such that when people are checking out
and there's too many on the shelf by the end
(14:45):
of the day, it will kick up a discount to
sell the products and not throw it away. Now changing
at one hundred times a day, I mean, and more
often during holidays, we're ema one thousands head of pricing.
Parts up sand Do. Doesn't that sound like a Norwegian name,
(15:08):
Parts Up sand Do?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Sure? Why not? He says. We lower the prices maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Ten cents, and then our competitors do the same and
it gets to be a race to the bottom. Now
that means that competitors also have these electronic discount rates
or electronic pricing, and I'm assuming that it is more
competitive instead of price surging. And the industry experts here
(15:35):
says it's just a matter of time when we're going
to be seeing dynamic pricing on groceries.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
However, alarms are raised.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
There are US lawmakers and consumer groups who say that
this is all about opening the way for prices to
go up as well as down.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Well why not, I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
What we don't do technology, because pricing goes up and down.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
It does anyway. You remember when they did that with gas.
They used to have to physically put those numbers up
on the board. I saw the other day on our
trip driving, I looked at the price for gas. We
went to another gas station so that that was more
(16:27):
drove back and the price had changed within those couple
of minutes. What people don't think about, Bill, is you're
talking about hours and hours and hours of manual labor
to go change those prices, which keep costs higher, of
people taking the physical paper labels and all of that,
(16:50):
and that things like fruit can change hourly at a
grocery store.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
As it is now.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
And I make you the whole technology thing, is it?
It makes so much more sense. And abuse does not
bar use, you know, just because people or stores might
abuse it, people won't shop there.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, it's the lot Itites are talking and they're saying,
oh no, we don't want technology there. I mean technologies
and technology it makes shoplifting much easier, which is great.
So you got you have algorithms for the shoplifter. I
mean it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
You wait till the meat prices go higher and then
you go, now it's worth stealing.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Right, that's and it may I mean, can you imagine
and think about this. Where As you just said, you
have a price of meat, and it's higher in the morning,
and not enough is being sold ground beef, so you
don't have enough e coli in the morning, so you
want to wait until it comes in in the afternoon
before you get it because it gives a little more
(17:56):
time to ferment, and it's a different.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Price, and it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And you're right in terms of the cost of the
labor man.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Fewer people to.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Steal because what the number one theft is inside jobs
where it's more than shoplifting, So there are few people
to steal goods. Go, I tell you, it makes all
the sense in the world, all right. Now, a little
bit of history. It's never been good to be a
Russian soldier. Never during World War One, for example, when Russia,
(18:35):
just as the Bolsheviks the Communists came into power. The
number of Russian soldiers that died during World War One
were in the millions. And then of course the then
you had the Communists come in and they were in
control through World War Two. Well, first of all, a
(18:56):
lot of soldiers were killed during the purges world War two.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
It was insane. Millions upon, millions.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Of Russian soldiers were killed, to the point where soldiers
that were going away from the front trying to retreat,
ran into government.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Officials and KVD.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
For the most part, the secret police who had machine
guns lined up behind the soldiers and if they turned
around and were retreating, they were shot and the soldiers
were fodder. It hasn't changed much because under Putin and Ukraine,
it's being estimated that there are already a million Russian
(19:43):
soldiers that have either been killed or have been or
have been injured. And this is a real problem because
what Russian soldiers are doing are torturing Russian.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Soldiers who are no longer willing to fight.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
This case for Putin, with the war in Ukraine, now
there have been when the four first started, you saw
lines of families and Russian soldiers or soon to be
Russian soldiers because they went right into conscription, going across
the border to make sure they got away from the
(20:29):
possibility of going to war, of killing Ukrainians, because do
they have skin in the game.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Look at the American servicemen who went to Vietnam, and
so many of them said what are we doing here?
And my contemporaries went to Vietnam. A lot of the
people that I went to school with that I knew,
ended up either being drafted because constrict conscription was there,
(21:00):
and or volunteering for the service because of the innate
patriotism that I'm fighting for my country. Well, the problem is,
it wasn't fighting for the country. I mean, the politics
of that were horrible. And unfortunately, some of them came
back in body bags. And I was talking to a
few of them, and this was a lot of years ago,
(21:22):
and I said, what was it like? I would ask
the question because I wasn't going to go, and I
certainly wasn't going to volunteer, and I lecked out in
terms of being drafted, and I said.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
What was it like? And they go out in the field.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
All of them smoked pot, and they would just go
out and hide literally and just behind a bush, spend
all day and hope they didn't get killed. And you've
got Russian soldiers now doing the same thing. The problem
is is that these are Russian soldiers. So it's not
(21:55):
a question of court martial and going to prison or
being demoted or being thrown out of the army. Oh no, no,
it's a question of being killed, it's a question of
being tortured. And those are the stories that we are
hearing about the utter torture of what's going on. And
(22:17):
there is one video that's out there, and there are
tons of videos of these soldiers being tortured by officers
and other soldiers who are fighting and don't want to
deal with want to punish those that don't want to fight.
So there is one video that is available, and it's
(22:38):
an appeal to President Putin for help, which makes no
sense because this is all on behalf of President Putin,
and he talked about poor equipment, lack of ammunition. Thirty
two men from his company survived after one battle, of
which there were one hundred and fifty person Now he
(23:01):
also tells Putiny's received less than a fifth of his
salary and his superiors tell him, don't even waste your
time complaining. And when deaths do occur on the battlefield,
the families aren't even told that someone has died. Why
because the families receive compensation, and if they're told they're missing,
(23:27):
then there's no compensation paid. And they are so desperate
that right now the Russian government is paying fairly big
money to Russians who quote volunteer and are willing to
go to the front lines and bonuses, but there aren't
(23:47):
enough of those, and it's it's it's tough. You just
don't want to be a Russian soldier anytime, certainly throughout
the history, and during the Sar the Tsaris days when
the star was the was in control, it was just
as bad. All right, guys, we are done. Neil is back.
I'm taking phone calls.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I'm taking phone calls for Handle on the Law off
the air, and the number is eight seven seven five
two zero eleven fifty and I'll give you marginal legal advice.
And during the course of these questions, I do this
for thirty five forty forty five minutes. You'll have no
commercials and no breaks, and no weather and no traffic.
(24:29):
It's just me and of course no patience, which makes
it all wonderful. All right, We're back again tomorrow with
Will and Amy wake up call from five to six.
Neil and I jump aboard at six and we do
this show just like we do this one every week.
This is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the
(24:54):
Bill Handle show catch my show Monday through Friday six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty. You are listening to the Bill Handle show.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey bye, AM six forty Bill Handle Here. It is
a Tuesday morning, Taco Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
It is a July twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're almost done with the month and some of the
big stories we're looking at. Is President Trump still dealing
with this Epstein business said he ended his friendship with
Epstein and threw him out of mar A Lago after
Epstein betrayed him by hiring people away from mar A Lago. Okay,
(00:49):
we'll see what happens. This story changes day by day.
How unusual. Okay, we haven't done this in a little while.
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 3 (01:09):
Good morning, Rich, welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
A couple of things I want to share with you
and maybe you'll tell me the truth on this one. Uh,
talking about Bluetooth, Okay, no Internet, no Wi Fi or
cell signal required. It has a real potential for disaster.
I thought Bluetooth was just you know, car phone to
(01:46):
you know, your cell phone to the car. I mean
I never thought bluetooth had any distance to it. Am
I wrong on that?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Uh? 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
(02:16):
Twitter co founder Jack Dorsey. He's done a lot in
the crypto world. He obviously founded Twitter. I interviewed him.
One'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
(02:38):
can 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
(02:59):
silly things, 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,
(03:21):
they can't block Bluetooth. So this is I think really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
What is the distance that this works? How far will
this signal go?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Well, that depends on how many people are using it
in the area.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
So okay, the way that both works.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And yeah, I'd say a couple 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,
(03:55):
the network could continue going on forever if those were
inner you know, connect 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
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
(04:17):
part is unclear to me.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Right now, Okay, moving on, and this one is it
always floors me. PayPal is now letting businesses except crypto
currency directly.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Number one, I've never understood crypto.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Don't have crypto to my grin because when it came
out I could have bought it for pennies. No, I'm sorry,
I could have bought lots of it for a penny.
And now it's what you hit one hundred and twenty
thousand dollars per coin last month. So you know, the
question is if pay Pal is doing this, has a
(04:55):
critical mass hit with crypto where it has become a
real Internet actually recognize currency.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
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
(05:23):
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
(05:44):
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
(06:04):
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 3 (06:19):
I know we don't have gold deserve.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, so we have, so it just opens this up.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, it doesn't back the dollar. Okay, let's do this.
We can talk about crypto for hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Rich, Let's go into this humanoid robot at six thousand
dollars fifty nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I don't know if that's cheap or not based on
what it can do.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
But the Chinese have come up with this, don't you
usually see the Japanese way ahead of the game on robots.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
That's a good question. I actually think I've seen more
Chinese robotics companies at CS than Japanese robotics companies, 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 Unitree. They had this at CS. It's been you know,
(07:11):
they've been at CS for a couple of years now,
but this two CSS 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,
(07:33):
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
(07:55):
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
(08:17):
aspect of these humanoids.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, what do it do?
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Well? It does whatever people want it to do. So
that'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
(08:44):
you know, 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 any between
twenty to one hundred thousand dollars. So this is this
is pretty advanced for the price.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
And when you talk about it, you can program it
to do anything. Let's say I buy it and I
have no technical skills whatsoever, how do I program this robot?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Or anybody else is not tech savvy.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Well, it's not going to be for someone that's not
tech savvy. 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.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
With these robots.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
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. That makes sense. How do you
say danger Will Robinson in Chinese?
Speaker 4 (09:48):
By the way, Yeah, danger Will Robinson.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
That's how you say in Chinese.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Okay, I don't know if that if that show was
I mean well, I mean know if that's from Is
that from like an old uh.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah, Robbie the Robot or yeah, yeah, lovestup in space? Okay,
well you.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
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 3 (10:17):
Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
From that.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
You want to look at that.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It's lost in space, Lost in space, very very sophisticated robot.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Uh you'll you'll love it. You'll that you'll be talking
about that forever. All right.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
We only literally have a couple of minutes left. 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.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Going to be.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I think that'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
(11:15):
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 I spoke to, you know,
we were all discussing this on over the weekend. Makes
(11:36):
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 3 (11:52):
Okay, Oh, by the way, you get to pop for
that humanoid robot?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Or can you get KTLA or I know you can
get iehearted to pop for it? But how are you
going to get your hands on one?
Speaker 4 (12:04):
You know what, I'm worried about it getting its hands
on me and buthering me.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So well said from that, Well said, all right, we'll
talk again next week tomorrow. As always, I think today
you have done as the segment yet on KTLA, on Instagram,
at rich on tech website, richon tech dot TV, and
this Saturday, eleven am to two pm right here on KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Rich you have a good day, Take care, thanks Bill.
All right, now going.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Into dynamic pricing, as I promoed this segment just as
we are ending the last segment. Dynamic pricing is something
we live with. Airline tickets change day to day, depending
on what time of day, depending on how many seats
are available. Hotels that always changes the price of hotels.
(12:57):
Disneyland has dynamic pricing. You never know, well, it changes
day to day. How about this? How about dynamic pricing
for groceries. In Norway, there is a grocery chain called
Rima one thousand and it uses electronic shelf labels to
(13:19):
change prices on what's on the shelf up to one
hundred times a day to match competitors or beat their prices,
and some US lawmakers and consumers consumers fear that these
electronic shelf labels will enable surge pricing, although the argument
(13:41):
from the stores it's actually the other way, and at
this point Kroger Whole Foods say they don't plan on
using them for dynamic pricing.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
What it is is, it's really easy.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It makes a lot more sense for the stores instead
of putting paper stickers on items or changing the price
on the shelf itself. That the part of the shelf
where you can slip in the price. That if there
are electronic if there's a little screen that changes the price,
that makes a lot of sense for them, and it
(14:16):
tells you about discounts that are available or coupons.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
I mean, that's easy to do.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
But you've got big grocery chains out there, starting with
Rima one thousand say they're implementing these digital labels for
efficiency to fight fight food waste with discounts. I mean,
the technology is such that when people are checking out
and there's too many on the shelf by the end
(14:45):
of the day, it will kick up a discount to
sell the products and not throw it away. Now changing
at one hundred times a day, I mean, and more
often during holidays, we're ema one thousands head of pricing.
Parts up sand Do. Doesn't that sound like a Norwegian name,
(15:08):
Parts Up sand Do?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Sure? Why not? He says. We lower the prices maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Ten cents, and then our competitors do the same and
it gets to be a race to the bottom. Now
that means that competitors also have these electronic discount rates
or electronic pricing, and I'm assuming that it is more
competitive instead of price surging. And the industry experts here
(15:35):
says it's just a matter of time when we're going
to be seeing dynamic pricing on groceries.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
However, alarms are raised.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
There are US lawmakers and consumer groups who say that
this is all about opening the way for prices to
go up as well as down.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Well why not, I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
What we don't do technology, because pricing goes up and down.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
It does anyway. You remember when they did that with gas.
They used to have to physically put those numbers up
on the board. I saw the other day on our
trip driving, I looked at the price for gas. We
went to another gas station so that that was more
(16:27):
drove back and the price had changed within those couple
of minutes. What people don't think about, Bill, is you're
talking about hours and hours and hours of manual labor
to go change those prices, which keep costs higher, of
people taking the physical paper labels and all of that,
(16:50):
and that things like fruit can change hourly at a
grocery store.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
As it is now.
Speaker 5 (16:57):
And I make you the whole technology thing, is it?
It makes so much more sense. And abuse does not
bar use, you know, just because people or stores might
abuse it, people won't shop there.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Yeah, it's the lot Itites are talking and they're saying,
oh no, we don't want technology there. I mean technologies
and technology it makes shoplifting much easier, which is great.
So you got you have algorithms for the shoplifter. I
mean it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
You wait till the meat prices go higher and then
you go, now it's worth stealing.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Right, that's and it may I mean, can you imagine
and think about this. Where As you just said, you
have a price of meat, and it's higher in the morning,
and not enough is being sold ground beef, so you
don't have enough e coli in the morning, so you
want to wait until it comes in in the afternoon
before you get it because it gives a little more
(17:56):
time to ferment, and it's a different.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Price, and it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
And you're right in terms of the cost of the
labor man.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Fewer people to.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Steal because what the number one theft is inside jobs
where it's more than shoplifting, So there are few people
to steal goods. Go, I tell you, it makes all
the sense in the world, all right. Now, a little
bit of history. It's never been good to be a
Russian soldier. Never during World War One, for example, when Russia,
(18:35):
just as the Bolsheviks the Communists came into power. The
number of Russian soldiers that died during World War One
were in the millions. And then of course the then
you had the Communists come in and they were in
control through World War Two. Well, first of all, a
(18:56):
lot of soldiers were killed during the purges world War two.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
It was insane. Millions upon, millions.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Of Russian soldiers were killed, to the point where soldiers
that were going away from the front trying to retreat,
ran into government.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Officials and KVD.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
For the most part, the secret police who had machine
guns lined up behind the soldiers and if they turned
around and were retreating, they were shot and the soldiers
were fodder. It hasn't changed much because under Putin and Ukraine,
it's being estimated that there are already a million Russian
(19:43):
soldiers that have either been killed or have been or
have been injured. And this is a real problem because
what Russian soldiers are doing are torturing Russian.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Soldiers who are no longer willing to fight.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
This case for Putin, with the war in Ukraine, now
there have been when the four first started, you saw
lines of families and Russian soldiers or soon to be
Russian soldiers because they went right into conscription, going across
the border to make sure they got away from the
(20:29):
possibility of going to war, of killing Ukrainians, because do
they have skin in the game.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Look at the American servicemen who went to Vietnam, and
so many of them said what are we doing here?
And my contemporaries went to Vietnam. A lot of the
people that I went to school with that I knew,
ended up either being drafted because constrict conscription was there,
(21:00):
and or volunteering for the service because of the innate
patriotism that I'm fighting for my country. Well, the problem is,
it wasn't fighting for the country. I mean, the politics
of that were horrible. And unfortunately, some of them came
back in body bags. And I was talking to a
few of them, and this was a lot of years ago,
(21:22):
and I said, what was it like? I would ask
the question because I wasn't going to go, and I
certainly wasn't going to volunteer, and I lecked out in
terms of being drafted, and I said.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
What was it like? And they go out in the field.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
All of them smoked pot, and they would just go
out and hide literally and just behind a bush, spend
all day and hope they didn't get killed. And you've
got Russian soldiers now doing the same thing. The problem
is is that these are Russian soldiers. So it's not
(21:55):
a question of court martial and going to prison or
being demoted or being thrown out of the army. Oh no, no,
it's a question of being killed, it's a question of
being tortured. And those are the stories that we are
hearing about the utter torture of what's going on. And
(22:17):
there is one video that's out there, and there are
tons of videos of these soldiers being tortured by officers
and other soldiers who are fighting and don't want to
deal with want to punish those that don't want to fight.
So there is one video that is available, and it's
(22:38):
an appeal to President Putin for help, which makes no
sense because this is all on behalf of President Putin,
and he talked about poor equipment, lack of ammunition. Thirty
two men from his company survived after one battle, of
which there were one hundred and fifty person Now he
(23:01):
also tells Putiny's received less than a fifth of his
salary and his superiors tell him, don't even waste your
time complaining. And when deaths do occur on the battlefield,
the families aren't even told that someone has died. Why
because the families receive compensation, and if they're told they're missing,
(23:27):
then there's no compensation paid. And they are so desperate
that right now the Russian government is paying fairly big
money to Russians who quote volunteer and are willing to
go to the front lines and bonuses, but there aren't
(23:47):
enough of those, and it's it's it's tough. You just
don't want to be a Russian soldier anytime, certainly throughout
the history, and during the Sar the Tsaris days when
the star was the was in control, it was just
as bad. All right, guys, we are done. Neil is back.
I'm taking phone calls.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I'm taking phone calls for Handle on the Law off
the air, and the number is eight seven seven five
two zero eleven fifty and I'll give you marginal legal advice.
And during the course of these questions, I do this
for thirty five forty forty five minutes. You'll have no
commercials and no breaks, and no weather and no traffic.
(24:29):
It's just me and of course no patience, which makes
it all wonderful. All right, We're back again tomorrow with
Will and Amy wake up call from five to six.
Neil and I jump aboard at six and we do
this show just like we do this one every week.
This is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the
(24:54):
Bill Handle show catch my show Monday through Friday six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
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