Speaker 1: You're listenings KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles show
Speaker 1: on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI AM six forty
Speaker 1: Bill Handle Here.
Speaker 2: It is a Taco.
Speaker 1: Tuesday, April eighth, And since it is Tuesday, and since
Speaker 1: it is eight o'clock, it's time for our Tech segment
Speaker 1: with Rich Demurow.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Rich, Hey, good morning to you, Bill, welcome back,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, as you know and as
Speaker 1: people now know, I went off to Italy where I
Speaker 1: got married and engaged in my honeymoon. And did you know,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, do you know how many times
Speaker 1: your name came up in the two weeks that I
Speaker 1: was gone?
Speaker 2: Three weeks and I came that I.
Speaker 1: Was gone, not once, that's correct, absolutely, yes, zero, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, You're welcome me humble.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Rich of course is not only kfi's tech guy and
Speaker 1: heard on the show every Saturday here on KFI eleven
Speaker 1: to two pm, but he's also a reporter on KTLA
Speaker 1: every day, the tech Reporter Instagram at Rich on tech website,
Speaker 1: rich on tech dot TV. We're also very proud of
Speaker 1: the fact, or at least the station is that Rich,
Speaker 1: you are syndicated and started right here on KFI.
Speaker 3: Yes, right there, and have expanded since it's been great
Speaker 3: and KFI is still my first love.
Speaker 1: That's his contract talker, by the way, I have seen
Speaker 1: his contract.
Speaker 2: He has to say that.
Speaker 1: All right, big news on the tariffs. Of course, that
Speaker 1: is the economic news globally. And you think of tariffs
Speaker 1: in terms of goods and services that are brought in.
Speaker 1: Let's connect tariffs to tech because we get so much
Speaker 1: tech from overseas, at least the manufactured.
Speaker 2: Part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that, you know, for me,
Speaker 3: the only thing that I think of when it comes
Speaker 3: to tariffs. I know we've talked about cars and all
Speaker 3: these different things from maple syrup to whatever, But for me,
Speaker 3: it's all about tech because all of these goods come
Speaker 3: from overseas.
Speaker 4: Pretty much a majority.
Speaker 3: Of them are made in China and of course Vietnam, Taiwan.
Speaker 3: So the entire tech industry is wondering, like, hey, what
Speaker 3: is happening here? Are we going to be seeing higher
Speaker 3: prices from the consumer standpoint? And also companies like what,
Speaker 3: you know, what do they do? How do they react
Speaker 3: to this? Do they immediately put these things on and
Speaker 3: pass the added costs on to consumers or do they
Speaker 3: wait and see Because there's so much turmoil right now,
Speaker 3: we don't really know what's happening.
Speaker 4: So the Chinese.
Speaker 3: Tariffs are supposed to happen starting April ninth, which is tomorrow,
Speaker 3: we don't know if that's going to happen. According to
Speaker 3: a report out of Bloomberg, they're saying that Apple stores
Speaker 3: saw a rush of consumers buying things like iPhones. And
Speaker 3: I would say just in general, like people texting me
Speaker 3: and asking me questions, there's been a lot of interest
Speaker 3: in especially phones and laptop computers. That's what people are wondering,
Speaker 3: you know, are these things going to increase in price?
Speaker 3: And then Nintendo, while you were gone last sweek bill
Speaker 3: they announced the switch to and then they said they
Speaker 3: have to delay pre orders because they're just not sure,
Speaker 3: like how this is all going to shake out.
Speaker 4: Do they have to charge more?
Speaker 3: These things are going to be more expensive than four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty dollars, which is the announced price that
Speaker 3: they came up with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with this tit for tat with China, and I
Speaker 1: don't see g President g or President Trump backing down.
Speaker 1: Both these guys have no problem playing chicken, and that's
Speaker 1: what's going on. And they both have a lot to
Speaker 1: lose and a lot to gain with these tariffs, more
Speaker 1: to lose than to gain. But let's talk about iPhones.
Speaker 1: If the tariffs go up to one hundred percent, which
Speaker 1: looks like Wednesday, they very well might. I don't see
Speaker 1: Trump backing down very quickly. What is an iPhone going
Speaker 1: to cost right now?
Speaker 3: It's a thousand bucks for an iPhone, yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: there's a report over the weekend. You know, the top
Speaker 3: of the line iPhone could be like over two thousand dollars, twenty.
Speaker 4: Five hundred something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, most people are getting the basic iPhone for
Speaker 3: eight hundred dollars. If that doubled in price, that'd be
Speaker 3: sixteen hundred. I from everything I can tell, the tech
Speaker 3: companies are taking sort of a weight and see they
Speaker 3: do not want to raise prices right now. And to
Speaker 3: give an example of a computer, you know, there are
Speaker 3: still deals to be had out there because a lot
Speaker 3: of the stock that we're seeing is stock that has
Speaker 3: already arrived in the country. It's already in the country,
Speaker 3: so those prices don't go up necessarily overnight. But future
Speaker 3: stock that arrives. That's where the problem is. And like
Speaker 3: you said, you know, these are two countries that don't
Speaker 3: want to back down. I mean, those are two leaders
Speaker 3: that are just sitting there, you know, with the world
Speaker 3: in their hands right now, and we're the consumers that
Speaker 3: are just feeling uncertain. Cenet did a survey and basically
Speaker 3: one in ten shoppers made big ticket purchases late last
Speaker 3: year or early this year to avoid these tariff price jumps.
Speaker 3: And I think the rest of the people are just
Speaker 3: worried and wondering, like, hey, what do I do now?
Speaker 1: Realistically, when we they talk about doubling prices, the price
Speaker 1: is one thousand dollars. iPhone is not going to double
Speaker 1: the two thousand dollars because shipping costs are not going
Speaker 1: to increase. Certainly, the forty percent profit margin that Apple
Speaker 1: makes or thirty five percent profit margin, that's not going
Speaker 1: to double to seventy percent.
Speaker 2: So it's the cost of.
Speaker 1: The good at goods as it leaves China and comes
Speaker 1: to the US. But still we're talking about a huge,
Speaker 1: huge jump in price, and you.
Speaker 2: Know what, and the go ahead.
Speaker 3: You know, look, these companies, I think at the beginning,
Speaker 3: if this goes on in a small way, these companies
Speaker 3: are probably going to take a hit on the profits
Speaker 3: that they make, right They're probably going to try to
Speaker 3: hold off any giant price increases as long as possible
Speaker 3: on the flip side if one company does it, because
Speaker 3: right now, nobody wants to be the first electronics the
Speaker 3: first tech company for a big headline to say iPhones
Speaker 3: just went up by one hundred dollars, right They don't
Speaker 3: want to be the first, because that's going to kick
Speaker 3: off a chain of events where every tech company can
Speaker 3: now say, okay, now we can raise the prices too.
Speaker 4: And then for consumers.
Speaker 3: Who are already sort of like in a tailspin here
Speaker 3: wondering like what's going on, that's not a good thing
Speaker 3: because then all of a sudden everyone has an excuse
Speaker 3: to raise prices. And it reminds us a lot of
Speaker 3: that pandemic era, right where one person raised prices and
Speaker 3: the grocery store prices just kept going up, up.
Speaker 4: Up up. We don't want that to happen with our gadgets.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not going to be fun at all.
Speaker 1: And thank goodness that I just bought my new iPhone, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I still don't know how to work it.
Speaker 1: I just you know, it's kind of need the technology
Speaker 1: and hopefully talked about this, but I've become a grilling
Speaker 1: freak for you know, just for some reason.
Speaker 2: I'm now grilling like every day.
Speaker 1: And there is a thermometer that I have that works
Speaker 1: on an app that immunigate to the meat. It's so
Speaker 1: neat and I still don't know quite how to work
Speaker 1: it because it's an app and it's I'll get.
Speaker 2: There because right now I'm just the meter bill. Uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: It's a little thing with the black handle that you
Speaker 1: it just sticks in the meat and you just put
Speaker 1: it on the grill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's about one hundred dollars. Meter is the big one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's I mean, that's probably a meter, but
Speaker 3: it's it's basically an app connected thermometer. So I tested
Speaker 3: the first one way back in the day. Wasn't a
Speaker 3: big fan because it was like a beta version. Now
Speaker 3: they've you know, they sent me a new one. I
Speaker 3: have yet to try it, but summer grilling seasons coming up.
Speaker 3: What do you what do you make in most days?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Steak?
Speaker 1: And I went to, uh, this is this is one
Speaker 1: that I never thought I would do, and that is
Speaker 1: I go to Costco, of course, where I buy my meat,
Speaker 1: and I am buying prime meat at twenty six dollars
Speaker 1: a pound for the high end steak. Now keep in mind,
Speaker 1: twenty six dollars for one pound of meat is equivalent
Speaker 1: to two shirts or two pairs of pants at Costco.
Speaker 4: And you gotta make choices. Do you want to be?
Speaker 2: But that is uh, just just to become a grill nutcase?
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna come back and we have a
Speaker 1: bunch more to talk about. Smart watch a budget one
Speaker 1: the day oh app which I have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 2: Is this a Harry Belafani situation here?
Speaker 4: I have no idea what that means.
Speaker 2: But okay, okay, Frank, okay, you don't know what that means?
Speaker 2: That stated me? Kno? That is that is that that day?
Speaker 2: Have you depour bunch?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Banana? Okay? Uh, that's okay.
Speaker 1: That's the deo song Harry Belifan eclips of music, having
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this app at all. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to throw that out because I just wanted
Speaker 1: to throw that out.
Speaker 2: So what is the dao app?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Well, I do know that song, by the way, that
Speaker 3: was in the Beetlejuice movie, So I do know that.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, it wasn't the Beatle Juice music.
Speaker 1: Harry Belafani introduced Calypso music the United States in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and he also and he then went on
Speaker 1: to become one of the great eros of the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. He was there at the march on Washington,
Speaker 1: the Martin Luther King I have a dream speech day
Speaker 1: and on and on. But anyway, let's talk about the app,
Speaker 1: because this is good for you for knowing that.
Speaker 2: By the way, the h what's the app?
Speaker 3: You know a little bit of pop culture. So this
Speaker 3: is an app called Deoh. It's based out of Portland,
Speaker 3: and the whole thing is to reward you for spending
Speaker 3: less time on social media. So if you can limit
Speaker 3: your usage to thirty minutes a day, you could.
Speaker 4: Earn five dollars in rewards, and.
Speaker 3: You can exchange those rewards, you can bank them and
Speaker 3: then get discounts on products like JBL YETI a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of other products that they have listed inside the app.
Speaker 3: And the whole point is to keep you off of Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 3: Facebook X, and the founder said they did this because
Speaker 3: you know, we're not getting anything in exchange for this
Speaker 3: unless you're a social media influencer making money off this stuff.
Speaker 3: You're basically giving up your data and your attention and
Speaker 3: they want you to reclaim that. So we'll see how
Speaker 3: this goes.
Speaker 2: Ye, I'm a little confused.
Speaker 1: You're getting points for not going onto all of these
Speaker 1: social media apps?
Speaker 2: Correct? And how do they measure how many you're not
Speaker 2: going to?
Speaker 4: Great question?
Speaker 3: So on the iPhone they're gonna I'm assuming they take
Speaker 3: advantage of the screen time where they can read how
Speaker 3: long you've been on certain apps. So under thirty minutes
Speaker 3: you're good. Over thirty minutes, they start docking that five
Speaker 3: dollars down to zero.
Speaker 1: And who is coming up with the five dollars if
Speaker 1: they're not monetizing this.
Speaker 3: Well, it seems like since you have to put the
Speaker 3: five dollars towards these rewards, it seems like it's more
Speaker 3: of a these companies have you know, given products to
Speaker 3: this day, oh, startup, and that's how you get it.
Speaker 3: So let me look at the products that they've got.
Speaker 3: They've got north Face hydro flask and Espresso diyce in.
Speaker 3: So it seems like it's it's more of a partnership
Speaker 3: with these companies to say, hey, look, you know, we'll
Speaker 3: give you a discount. You know, it's like maybe you'll
Speaker 3: get fifty dollars off of Dice and if you if
Speaker 3: you spend that little bit of time on social media.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a partnership, it seems with these
Speaker 3: makes sense.
Speaker 2: It's a marketing I'll buy a marketing partnership. That's I'll
Speaker 2: buy that.
Speaker 1: Now, the five dollars is signifies what a length of
Speaker 1: time and I don't quite know the formula.
Speaker 3: Here, thirty minutes or less gets you five bucks. So
Speaker 3: thirty minutes or less you get the five dollars. You
Speaker 3: get that every day. So if you theoretically in a
Speaker 3: month you can rack up one hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 3: that to me, Bill seems way too good to be true,
Speaker 3: because that that seems like if you're on this thing
Speaker 3: for two months, that's three hundred dollars worth one of
Speaker 3: these brands. So there must be like some fine print
Speaker 3: the only use it towards like fifty percent of the
Speaker 3: product or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have to be some somewhere a Nigerian
Speaker 1: prince is connected to this.
Speaker 2: I'm convinced of.
Speaker 4: That, well, a Nigerian prince in Portland.
Speaker 2: But remember those, remember those scams. God, I love those,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: Rich Thank you Saturday morning, eleven to two pm here
Speaker 1: on KFI and Instagram, at rich on Tech website, rich
Speaker 1: on tech Dot TV.
Speaker 2: Rich you have a good day. We'll catch you tomorrow
Speaker 2: on this ship on the TV. Take care bye, Thank you.
Speaker 4: Bill.
Speaker 1: All right, there is a story out there that just
Speaker 1: grabbed me, as it did with Ann also, and that
Speaker 1: is about a biotech company called Colossal Biosciences, and it
Speaker 1: has brought back it is claimed to have brought back
Speaker 1: the dire wolf. The dire wolf went extinct ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, and Colossal says.
Speaker 2: Here it is, we have two of these little cubs.
Speaker 2: Oh they're cutest pie.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen the video. Oh they're
Speaker 1: the cutest things, a little white dire wolves. Anyway, it's
Speaker 1: calling it the de extinction process. Interestingly enough, is it
Speaker 1: genetic engineering? Is it cloning? Now I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: in this stuff, the technical side of it, and there
Speaker 1: seems to be a difference between what they did and
Speaker 1: actual cloning.
Speaker 2: Cloning is taking DNA.
Speaker 1: From For example, they're working on the wooly mammoth, bringing
Speaker 1: a wooly mammoth back. And if you ever saw Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: which of course everybody has, they took the DNA of
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that the mosquitoes sucked up its blood and then
Speaker 1: got encased in amber. But that was the actual DNA,
Speaker 1: which can be preserved for certainly ten thousand years.
Speaker 2: Isn't the problem. This is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: This is using wolves that are in existence now, but
Speaker 1: the closest thing to dire wolves doing some a little manipulation.
Speaker 1: Don't know whether or not they've actually gotten DNA from
Speaker 1: dire wolves either, bones certainly that would be it. I
Speaker 1: think there's not a little bray of tarpits I have
Speaker 1: dire wolves in it, and they took.
Speaker 2: It out for the exhibit. I think dire wolves are
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, these guys are long gone and they're saying,
Speaker 1: here we go, We've brought back this puppy and it
Speaker 1: went extinct ten thousand years ago. Now, BOYD, does that
Speaker 1: open up all kinds of issues? Does that mean that
Speaker 1: I guess you can bring back dinosaurs. Probably not, because
Speaker 1: you know, there isn't much DNA left the species that
Speaker 1: died forty million years ago. But if this is real,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying it's not real, it's a question
Speaker 1: of is this genetically is this a dire wolf or
Speaker 1: is it kind of sort of looks like a dire
Speaker 1: wolf and it is as close as you can get
Speaker 1: without it being the real thing. And there are detractors
Speaker 1: that say, no, it's close, it looks like it, but
Speaker 1: it really isn't. On the other hand, what Colossal is
Speaker 1: saying is it looks like it, it talks like it,
Speaker 1: it walks like it.
Speaker 2: It is much like a quacking duck.
Speaker 1: And so the head of the team, the investigative team,
Speaker 1: the scientific team that did this, extracted dire wolf DNA
Speaker 1: from two existing fossils to sequence the animal's genome. Did
Speaker 1: they use that DNA specifically? You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: the science here, but there is a difference. They've taken
Speaker 1: a gray wolf genome. A gray wolf is genetically ninety
Speaker 1: nine point five percent identical to dire wolves, so the
Speaker 1: two are really close. And they said they edited the
Speaker 1: cells that multiple places to sequence the dire wolf version
Speaker 1: of the DNA. Again, I'm not an expert, and I'd
Speaker 1: love to have someone who is in dire need of information.
Speaker 1: That's very funny, who is in need of information to
Speaker 1: send me an email and say, handle, you got it,
Speaker 1: or handle you don't know what the hell you're talking about,
Speaker 1: Probably the latter. But this is such fascinating stuff because
Speaker 1: when I started practicing in third brought party reproduction. One
Speaker 1: of the issues and we're talking about I was teaching.
Speaker 1: I know it's hard to believe, but I taught law
Speaker 1: school for four years and reproductive law. One of the
Speaker 1: issues was genetic engineering in terms of human reproduction and
Speaker 1: where this is going to go and the ethics involved
Speaker 1: in that. There's nothing unethical about this bringing a dire
Speaker 1: wolf back. No one's going to argue bringing a human
Speaker 1: being back as a clone, or genetically engineering a human
Speaker 1: being is a very different animal, as a dire wolf
Speaker 1: is a very different animal.
Speaker 2: This gets very complicated. So you know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to bail out of this one, and I'll
Speaker 1: pick up this story later on as it develops, and
Speaker 1: and I'll talk about.
Speaker 2: This all right.
Speaker 1: I want to end the show with the concept of
Speaker 1: space ads, a sky full of ads. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about sky writing, which are adds up in the air.
Speaker 1: Even those drones that fly around those are kind of
Speaker 1: neat how they can.
Speaker 2: It's in lieu of fireworks.
Speaker 1: The drones make American flags and you see all kinds
Speaker 1: of fun stuff that you can do with drones. But
Speaker 1: that is near what's right on top of it's a
Speaker 1: few hundred feet up in the air. These are ads
Speaker 1: in space. And there's a Russian company that's doing exactly that.
Speaker 1: They've actually sent up a prototype already. The company is
Speaker 1: Avant Space. It has deployed the first space media satellite
Speaker 1: into Earth's orbit and it's a prototype for a quote
Speaker 1: planned fleet of small, low cost laser equipped satellites designed
Speaker 1: to and here's according to the Scientific American and they
Speaker 1: described it to emblazon the Earth's sky with corporate logos,
Speaker 1: QR codes and other consumer cultural ephemerara.
Speaker 2: I even had to look that up. What the hell epemera.
Speaker 1: Something it's temporary, Yes, that's exactly right. It's something that's
Speaker 1: very temporary, like fireworks. And so imagine this. You're talking
Speaker 1: about looking up at the night sky and it's only
Speaker 1: going to be between this hilarious how they scribe it
Speaker 1: between dusk and daylight. Wow, really, thank you for telling
Speaker 1: us that, because up in the middle of the sun,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day, yeah, you'd be able
Speaker 1: to see it, right, Thank you, you geniuses. So it's
Speaker 1: only at night, and they say it's only going to
Speaker 1: be above populated cities because the big concern actually is
Speaker 1: telescopes that would be wiped out.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't be able to see the stars.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of weird, but that seems to
Speaker 1: be the major complaint. Now a lot of scientists are
Speaker 1: a little upset about this, having these giant billboards up
Speaker 1: in the sky and I'm talking about filling the sky up.
Speaker 1: And it's cheap too. They're saying, sixty five million dollars.
Speaker 1: They can put these puppies up and make a bucket
Speaker 1: of money. Is anything stopping them? Is there a loss
Speaker 1: stopping them? Absolutely not. You know, space is internationalized by treaty.
Speaker 1: It belongs to nobody. Now everybody has their own every
Speaker 1: country has its own airspace, but it only goes up
Speaker 1: to the stratosphere. After that it's an open playground. You
Speaker 1: can no one can tell anybody what to put up
Speaker 1: what not to put up.
Speaker 2: Elon musk.
Speaker 1: Now he is because it's an American company, SpaceX, he
Speaker 1: has to comply. And if you're launching rockets off the
Speaker 1: United States, you have to comply. The FAA actually controls that.
Speaker 1: But you go to other countries, they're by treaty, they
Speaker 1: can do whatever the hell they want. And that is
Speaker 1: the fear, and scientists are going nuts. Now can you
Speaker 1: imagine you walk out, Not that we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of pollution with billboards already as you drive down
Speaker 1: the street, but you look up and the sky is
Speaker 1: filled with effectively what these drones can do. And it's
Speaker 1: all pretty neat stuff. And my in favor of it
Speaker 1: depends on what they show up there, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, all right, Neil, stop shaking your head. We're done, guys,
Speaker 1: all right. Coming up Gary and Shannon at ten thirty.
Speaker 1: They're going to talk about homes being rebuilt in Palisades,
Speaker 1: which is great news. Not one permit has been issued
Speaker 1: in Altadena and they're talking about that at ten thirty.
Speaker 2: Also, I'm taking phone calls.
Speaker 1: And I will be engaged in answering marginal legal questions
Speaker 1: with marginal legal advice off the air right at the top.
Speaker 2: Of the hour when I say goodbye.
Speaker 1: A few minutes after we lock out the number eight
Speaker 1: seven seven five two zero eleven fifty. Eight seven seven
Speaker 1: five two zero eleven fifty. And since I'm doing this
Speaker 1: off the air, as I us plee and always tell you,
Speaker 1: there are no breaks, there are no commercials, there's no news,
Speaker 1: there's no traffic, and certainly no patients on my part.
Speaker 1: So we go through these phone calls fairly quickly. Eight
Speaker 1: seven seven five two zero eleven fifty.
Speaker 2: We're done. Peene back again tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Wake up call at five am with Amy, and then
Speaker 1: at six Neil and I join a board and we
Speaker 1: do this show until right about now, and then of
Speaker 1: course we have kno and and do whatever they do.
Speaker 2: And Will, I think, is back tomorrow.
Speaker 1: He will be.
Speaker 2: He's fine, he will be. Will will be here. Ah huh,
Speaker 2: there you go. Hey, you really miss me, didn't you?
Speaker 2: All right? Catch in the morning, everybody Handle in the morning.
Speaker 2: Pardon we actually did? Oh, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: All right, tomorrow morning KFI am six forty.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Bill Handle show.
Speaker 1: Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine
Speaker 1: AM and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.