You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty one two.
Thank you, Thank you. You are listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Thank you technology from the bottom of our laser pants technology. Thank you technology.
And this is I AM six forty Bill Handle here on a Tuesday morning,
July the second. The big news Hurricane Barrel, which is Burrel Beryl
is just going through the Caribbean at a Cat five one hundred and sixty miles
sustained WIN, one hundred and sixty miles per hour sustained WIN. I mean
that is devastating. Well the words catastrophic, that's the way it's being described.
And it is. As it goes over these Caribbean islands, it's just
wiping them out. NASA and Saint Kitts and Nevis and that whole area just
gone. It's a shame. It's a big one. It is really bad.
The strongest hurricane at this point in the season that we've ever had on
well they've ever had on record. We don't have to worry about it,
Okay. Sign for tech Talk with Rich Demurrow. Rich heard every Saturday here
on KFI eleven am to two pm, right after Handle on the Law On
Saturdays. You can follow Rich on Instagram, at rich on Tech website,
rich on tech dot TV and good morning Rich. Hey, good morning to
you. Bill. Oh, we got an awful lot of going going on
this morning. Okay, it seems like we're going to start every single segment
that we ever do with some kind of a story about AI, and we're
doing that this week too. Instagram and the way it's labeling AI posts,
what's going on with that? Yeah, this is and look, you know,
AI is pretty much the hottest thing going in the industry right now.
There's you know, companies that are trying to implement it and then also companies
reacting to it. So there's two side to this whole thing, the push
towards this technology and also figuring out how it all works. So Meta,
which owns Facebook and Instagram, they have this little label they've been slapping on
posts that you make, and it would say made with AI. If you
posted some sort of picture that maybe you adjusted in some way, even if
it was a minor adjustment, it would label it made with AI. And
people are like, wait a second, Like all I did was brighten it
up or change one little aspect. Why are you putting this AI label on
it. So now Meta after a couple of weeks is changing their tune.
They're going to change it to AI info. So this is because you know,
photographers were saying, look, we were using Photoshop to just do little
things, and we think this is clear because it's not necessarily AI, you
know, made with AI. It's just kind of AI enhanced and so small
change but kind of meaningful. Yeah. I don't get that. I don't
understand how the algorithm knows that it's not Photoshop and it's a in the manufacture
of that likeness. It's able to figure that out. Yeah, it depends
on the program. So many of the mainstream programs at this point are putting
a water mark in the file itself. So when you make a change on
Photoshop or with something like a Google Photos. A lot of these companies are
working. There's no standard just yet, but many of them do have a
flag that they put in what's called the metadata. That's the stuff that's inside
the file. It's the stuff that most people don't change or can't change,
and so once it's in there, the computer program, like when you upload
it to Facebook, will look for that flag. It'll say, okay,
this was created by Photoshop. There's that little flag that says it was AI
generated, and we'll place the label on the photo, all right, So
Photoshop itself would have to in fact put that watermark on there, the very
program itself, and then when it's uploaded, it carries that signature. Do
I have that right? Yeah? And keep in mind that this is not
a perfect system. There is no standard, and people can obviously change these
water marks. Some companies are putting actual visual water marks on the image itself.
So if you generate an image on a Samsung phone using AI, there
will be a little kind of magic icon in the lower left hand corner.
Let's see where else have I seen it? On Copilot, which is Microsoft's
image generator, and also Facebook's own image generator, will put a little label.
So you know, nobody really knows how this is all going to shake
out in the future. We could just assume everything's going to be AI generated,
but some of these companies are taking a more proactive approach because you know,
they don't want the regulation from the government. They want to say,
hey, we can handle this stuff ourselves, and that's what they're trying to
do. Obviously, it's all over the place. Hey, in terms of
what's going on with AI and how we're covering it and how it's growing.
Is it reaching the point where the story is going to be what is not
using a I you know, for example, talking about electronic equipment that has
tubes in it where it's the outlier. It is just you have to really
look for that. Yeah, I think that's Uh. I think every single
product at this point that I've been covering there is some aspect of AI to
it. And I think in the future, right now that's a selling point.
I think in the future I will be doing stories where right now we're
doing the stories about the dumb phones people going back to like flip phones and
stuff because they're anti all the notifications and the technology and they want to be
more you know, well being focused. I think we're gonna see that with
AI, Like, hey, here's a here's an artist or a photographer or
a writer that doesn't use AI to generate their stuff. How how novel is
that? Yeah, it's completely crazy. Boy, that has changed. How
long has AI been out there, by the way, what we think about
it in terms of the time that technology is moving forward, what's the timeline
when AI really just became a thing. Well, chat gbt was launched in
November twenty twenty two, so in the public eye, that is the age
of AI. But obviously, you know, Google and all these tech companies
have been using AI for many, many years, probably a decade or more.
They just didn't term it that a in a big way. It was.
It used to be called machine learning, you know, neural networks,
all these other terms. But when chat gbt launched, that was the first
sort of forward facing consumer product. Okay, so the actual inception of AI
slash machine learning, slash neural network that sort of thing. When did that
first get into the market? Oh gosh, I mean they around forever?
Well forever what nineteen nineties, two thousands, I mean we're talking at least
I mean since Look, Google has been using some sort of form of AI
since its inception. I mean, I think it's it's safe to say that
every tech company has been using if they're using computer networks, if they're using
systems that they've trained on machine learning. It's been around for a long time.
So it's not it's just the branding of it for the consumer. I
think, is the new AI aspect, and also the fact that we can
interact with these machines in a much more natural language. I think that's the
shift that we've seen recently. But yeah, these things have been around for
a long time. Okay, that helps explain it. Put in perspective for
me at least. All Right, let's talk about Koperski. I didn't even
know what a Koperski was, but it's some kind of anti virus. Explain
what's going on with that. Yeah, it's actually pretty pretty popular antivirus.
You probably know, like McAfee and Norton. It's a along those lines.
Okay, but yeah, Kaspersky, you know. But just given the name,
you can understand probably why the US is interested in banning this. So
ties to Russia, obviously, and that's the problem. And so President by
and has banned the sale of this antivirus software in the US effective immediately for
new sales. And if you have this already on your computer, which millions
do, existing users will have until September twenty ninth to find alternative software.
Now, the Department of Commerce, you know, it's kind of like the
TikTok treatment. They're saying, Look, we think this is a risk to
the United States national security, but you know, they can't really give specifics
on that, and Kasperski obviously denies any issue with their software whatsoever. They
say this is all based on global politics and not actually the quality of their
product. But you know, this puts a lot of people in a tough
position because some have paid for this for the next year or two and now
you've got to switch to something different. So the recommendation is to uninstall this,
and you can use Microsoft Defender, which is built into the computer,
or you can use a free alternative like a vast Okay, well, let
me ask this. Where is Koperski based out dead Is it Russia? Yeah?
I believe they are based in Russia. Yeah, okay, So I
mean that's there's an argument there. And when you talk about there are free
anti viral viruses out there versus paid, can you get just as good protection
with a free one? You know, it's interesting a lot of the tech
folks are now recommending that you can just get away with what's built into my
into Windows. So Windows has this thing called Defender, and that's built into
Windows. And most people say that's fine for the average person, But you
know, there's been so much talk about anti virus over the years and paying
for antivirus that most people I think still prefer to pay because they feel like
they're getting more protection, and you do get other things versus the free versus
paid paid. You might get, you know, more up to date virus
definitions, you might get more real time scanning versus you know, a scan
that happens, you know, every once in a while. So there are
some benefits to that. But I think the number one thing these days for
the average person is really clicking on phishing links. That's the number one thing
that's really nailing people. And some of these systems, even the antivirus,
they can't really detect those links in real time. A lot of times your
browser does that, so if you use something like micros, Google Chrome,
it's using AI to actually sift through links in like real time and figure out
if those are going to be bad. Hey, Internet prices and they're all
over the place, and boy do I know that because I broadcast from home
occasionally, as you know, and I have a dedicated line I think they
call it an IP line or ISP line, and it costs me hundreds of
dollars a month, and I'd love to know how I can save money.
Yeah, I'll be honest, you probably don't even need that, but I
mean it's probably these days, it's probably overkill. But I think what you
have is a fixed IP address, which means your signal is constant, like
all the time. It doesn't doesn't change, which is good for doing a
radio show from home. But anyway, so, the average price for internet,
and I'm sure you're paying more than this, is sixty three dollars a
month. This is from c neet. They did a kind of an analysis
of some of the popular providers. Equipment rental averages fifteen dollars a month,
which brings the total monthly to about seventy eight. Now Here in Los Angeles,
if you're in the urban areas, you probably have some pretty good choices
when it comes to Internet and speeds. Some people don't have such good options.
If you're in a rural location, you might only have DSL and satellite.
Those are much slower. But fiber is the fastest. And the thing
I like about fiber is that it's the same speed up and down. So
here in Los Angeles, we have a lot of people working in Hollywood,
a lot of people working with large video files, large audio files. Fiber
has the same speed up and down typically, which means when you're uploading or
downloading, it's going to be just as fast. So the ways to save
bill You can bring your own equipment, so you can you know, instead
of renting your modem, you can buy your own. You can negotiate,
although a lot of providers are not negotiating as much as they used to.
You can downgrade your plan. If you think you have too much speed,
you can actually go to a cheaper plan that has a lower speed. Or
if you're in the lucky area where you have more than one provider, you
can switch. And that's actually opened up bill. Because all these companies you'll
probably see them advertising, like Verizon Home Internet and T Mobile five G.
That's putting a little pressure on the cable companies because it used to be they
were the only game in town. Now, if you just have a basic
need for your Internet, you could easily be serviced by a T Mobile five
G or a Verizon over the air. They're using cellular signals to actually deliver
internet to your house. Enter price is going down in terms of internet providing
in general. I mean, I think for the speeds you're getting, they're
going down, that's generally, but I think overall they're going up. You
know, people, nothing goes down meaningfully. I think the speeds have gotten
Let's put it this way, your speeds have gotten faster for what you're paying
for. But I don't think you know, we're seeing significantly lower prices than
we did. I think the speeds are just faster. Now. With that
said, the five G I just mentioned, those prices are very much cheaper.
But even those prices are going up already. I've noticed. All right,
Rich, thank you. This Saturday, right after my show that is
the Tech Show eight to eleven o'clock. Excuse me, eleven to two pm.
I'm eight to eleven right here Saturday morning. KFI on Instagram is at
rich on tech website, rich on tech dot TV. You have a good
one, Rich. We'll catch over the weekend. Thanks Bill. Now,
a couple things are happening around the world that I want to share with you.
One of them is that the Western world is turning right wing. Now
when you talk about Russia, for example, already has of course with putin
China no issue because of course the Communist party is in charge. So we
don't even worry about liberal conservative, but when you talk about the democracies of
the Western world, it's becoming a lot more conservative. These democracies, even
though they're legitimate democracies, people vote becoming much more conservative. One of the
big reasons is demographics. People are getting older, lasting longer. Birth rate
is dropping, which means that the older people who have immense power always have
you know why, because they vote. That is the largest single block of
voters that exist. And man, is that powerful? And what is the
first rule for any politician? Way beyond putting the country first, making sure
that he or she is a patriot, It's all about getting reelected. That's
all that matters. Why is a Republican party so pro Trump? Why does
he control it? Very simple reason. You don't go against him. You're
primaried out. You go against them. It's over in terms of even the
primaries. Where that's it done? And what's the number one rule? You
get reelected. That's what it's all about. So people, as they're getting
older, they are their vote is becoming more important because there's more of them.
And you know what older people tend to do. Older people tend to
vote much more conservatively. And why is that. Well, when you're young,
you're a communist. That's probably the most liberal point of your life.
I remember in college screaming about distribution of wealth, and you have to be
poor. I mean, you have to spread the wealth, you have to
take care of poor people. Well, as you get older, you sort
of want to hang on your money because first of all, you get some
and you don't want to take it away. Hell, I've worked all these
years. Do I want the government to take my money and give it to
those people? There were times when I work seven days a week. I
know Neil does. There were times when I worked fourteen, sixteen hours a
day, especially when I was building my law practice. There were many times
that I worked all night, pulled all nighters. And do I want to
share my money? No? No, I've worked damn hard and I would
like to keep most of my money. That's the way older people tend to
think in far greater numbers, and younger people seemed to go the other way.
And the major problem when you're talking about a democracy, you've got to
vote. It's not that complicated. You've got to vote. There was a
time when Hispanics, even though they were a good chunk of the population had
no influence. Why is that because Hispanics didn't vote. Now they've turned around
and go, oh, okay, it's time for a little political power.
And you get that simply by voting and voting for your candidates that you believe
in. So we are more conservative as we are getting older. This is
a story that came into Wall Street Journal and actually looked at Britain. But
Britain is just an example of what's going on throughout the Western democracies. There
are more people over sixty than there are people under forty, and people under
forty generally don't die. People over sixty do die. Macrone, for example,
in France, just got nailed. One of his big reasons is he
wanted to bring the retirement age from sixty two to sixty four. We're sixty
five, and he got nailed for that. He just lost so many well
the first round his party just got slaughtered. Why because you know, people
want to retire early. The people that are over over forty, over sixty
are well, are really interested in keeping their money. And the way you
keep your money is not letting people retire earlier. And you have to balance
the budget. And McCrone said, we can't afford it, and you can't
say we don't afford it. So we're here at sixty five, all right,
and we retire at sixty five, and all of a sudden, we're
collecting unemployment. Excuse me, we're collecting I sound starting to sound like Joe
Biden. We're collecting Medicare, we are collecting social Security, and it costs
of fortune. And younger people they don't care. They don't care. So
those of us who are baby boomers and are over sixty five. And by
the way, when they say when you hear the phrase, sixty five is
just a number, they're right, sixty five is just the number. It's
sixty five. That's the number. It's like dog years. How long is
a dog year? It's one year. That's how long a dog year is.
They just last till they're fifteen. So when we hit sixty five,
we hit sixty five. But here's the problem. As I said, we're
getting older. My mother retired at sixty two. She died at ninety eight.
And so you figure those numbers out how much it cost you, how
much it cost me to support her? She should have died at ninety three,
that's when she went south. But since I was paying for her care
over and above social Security, she lasted five more years just to screw with
me, and she succeeded beyond my wile ofest expectations. Years of that check
over and over again, and the only thing she could do was smile as
she was screwing me over Why because I was paying those taxes and I wasn't
receiving social Security. Okay, back we go with the concept that older people
are voting more and more because there are more older people. The world is
aging. The birth rate is dropping, certainly among industrialized nations, which means
there are simply more older people around because they're lasting longer and they vote conservatively,
which means in many ways the world is turning very right wing. So
storing in the Wall Street Journal and they use England as an example of the
UK, but it's the same in all industrialized nation because older people just vote
more and get incredible power. So in the run up to the election coming
up on Thursday by elections in Britain, every major party backs the country's triple
lock guarantee for retirees that state pension effectively social security. There will outpace inflation
over the long term. Last year, their social Security their pincha their checks
rose ten percent medium age in medium age medium age wage for workers that was
between nineteen forty nine rose by five point seven. Okay, so ten percent
bump versus six percent wage increase. This is for Social Security recipients or their
version. This year another eight percent bump for elderly people. Why well,
because they vote and young young people just don't care. And when they do
care, they're a bunch of communists and they want us to simply give them
money, and we're saying absolutely not. In twenty twenty two the US midterms,
two thirds of the citizens over sixty five voted. I mean that is
this is in the midterms. Two thirds voted, double the rate of eighteen
to twenty nine year olds. Well, when you have twice as many people
voting, guess what happens, You get more power. Social Security is the
third rail. No one screws with Social Security. Medicare started in Lyndon Johnson's
presidency, and man, it was a vicious fight. Get a politician today
anywhere on the spectrum and say how do you feel about Medicare? Social Security
is running out of money, just straight out running out of money. Ask
a politician here, how do you feel about so security, more taxes?
What do you think? How about this fewer benefits? Try doing that and
get re elected. So as you get older, especially anybody over the age
of sixty five, and that's boomer land, you know, keep in mind,
you've got more power than you ever ever could imagine. All right,
we're done, guys, I'm taking phone calls. Handle on the law off
the air eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty eight seven seven five two
zero eleven fifty no breaks and no patients on my part. Calls go very
quickly as you can imagine, and you can still listen to KFI right there
on the phone while you're waiting, and you're not going to be waiting long,
believe me. Eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty. Back we
come again tomorrow. That's January third, the day before the Did I say
January? Okay, sorry, I misspoke. January is not the date.
July fourth is Thursday. Let me okay, July fourth is Thursday. President.
Would you like to go back? Yeah? I would. Let me
Let me confuse Medicare. We made Medicare happen, and July fourth is Thursday.
I'll figure this out. So tomorrow we're coming back, starting with wake
up Call Heather Brooker and then six o'clock Neil and I come aboard and as
always, Cono never goes home as does and never going home catching tomorrow.
This is KFI AM six forty 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