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John C. Morley: (00:09)
Hi everyone. I'm John C. Morley, the host of the JMOR tech talk show and inspirations for your life.
John C. Morley: (01:01)
Well, hi, everyone. It is John C. Morley, serial entrepreneur here, and welcome to another wonderful edition of the JMOR tech talk show. I can't believe we only have one more week left in July. Where did this entire summer go? I will tell you that it's been a little bit crazy, and I don't know, it just kind of flew by us. All right. We got a great show here for you guys tonight. Lots of stuff is happening, different people leaving companies and all kinds of stuff. So let's get right into the show. Shall we? Great. So the first thing I wanna talk about is something really interesting. How many of you out there know what the ring doorbell is? Any of you? Okay. So the ring doorbell is a product rolled out so people could put this device at their door.
John C. Morley: (02:01)
And then not only would people be able to ring the bell and be notified, but also on an app on their phone. And thus, not only would they get notified, but they would also get a picture. And with some models, you'd be able to save so many seconds of video, either to the camera or to the cloud, if you paid extra for that. So the ring doorbell is doing something very interesting, more than just announcing visitors. Well, what's it doing? That's an amazing, amazing question. It's doing a lot more, and you're probably saying, well, John, what more could a doorbell do? I mean, you know, when we think about a ring doorbell, I mean, what's it doing? Well, the ring doorbell is similar to other products, but as I said, it's doing more than just answering the door or telling people who are at the door.
John C. Morley: (02:59)
And so what do I mean by that? Well, the thing about the ring doorbell is that it's helping some people from all around the country and what it's helping them do is provide police footage about what happened at the door to come there. So, the ring has provided this coverage without the owner's consent 11 times so far in the last year of 2022. So this smart doorbell has provided surveillance footage to law enforcement without a warrant or the consent of doorbell owners. But the important thing to know is that this device, which I know many people have purchased, is not just a convenience but a security device because somebody's at your house. You know who they are. If it's a UPS person, a FedEx person, or an Amazon person, you know who they are. And you also have, let's say, security or peace of mind.
John C. Morley: (04:16)
So I think this is a great product. And you might be saying, " Hey, John, how much is the ring doorbell? Well, that's a great question. So the ring doorbell comes in different flavors with options and things like that. But when we think about the ring doorbell, the basic ring doorbell, they have the wired one, and then they have another version as well. So they have the where, so the ring doorbell (wired) starts at $59.99. Okay. 2.4 gigahertz. And so, as I said, there are different ring doorbell models like I was saying to you. And so the ring video doorbell pro is the most expensive of all the ring devices. And it comes in at about $249.99. And so the ring doorbell four is $199.99. And the ring video doorbell three is $179.90. And the ring people cam is $129 99. And the ring video doorbell second generation is $99.99. So this can be a little confusing. Why are there so many versions of the ring doorbell? Anybody wanna guess that?
John C. Morley: (05:49)
Well, simply put, there are some bells and whistles that others don't have. For example, on the video doorbell 2020 release, one came out. Then I told you it was the three, then there's the three plus the four, the wire, the pro, the pro two, and then the video doorbell elite has come out. So what is the difference? Well, the neat thing about these doorbells is they're all very, very, very similar. For example, I told you the one that's wired has some things like that, but 2020 has customizable motion detection zones and near motion zone capability, as opposed to the three that only have customizable motion detection zones, as well as the three plus the four has the same as 2020 the wired same as well.
John C. Morley: (06:57)
And the video doorbell pro has the customizable motion detection zone, and the pro 2 does the same thing. And the video doorbell lead has everything on there. Now there are some other differences. For example, 2020 only supports 2.4 gigahertz networks. And the ones that support 2.4 gigahertz or 5 gigahertzes would be the three plus, the four, the video doorbell pro, the video doorbell pro two, and the video doorbell elite. So obviously, the one that's hardwired can be hardwired. Okay. And there are different features, such as the video doorbell three is a 50, 60 Hertz DC halogen, and garden lane transformers are incompatible with that model. Okay. Then we jump over to the video doorbell three plus 8 to 24 volts, 40 volts max. Okay. 50, 60 Hertz. Again, same thing. The lighting transformers from their garden are not compatible with that model.
John C. Morley: (08:11)
And you're gonna see all this up the line. Now, when you get to the top of the line, the video doorbell elite. It has POE (power over Ethernet), and it meets the 15.4-watt power standard of the IEEE and the 802.3 AF POE or IEEE 802.38 POE plus standard. All right. So you might be saying to me, John, what the heck is the IEEE 802? I know that's probably going through what a few people said, so I want to keep this simple, but I do want to explain this to everyone because I think it's important that everyone know. You know what these standards mean and what they do. All right. So basically, it's called the IEEE 802.3 standard, the IEEE 802.3 AT standard.
John C. Morley: (09:10)
So there was the AF, and then there was the AT. So the big difference between the AF and the AT is that the 802.3 AT POE plus is the amount of power delivered over each standard. And the 802.3 AF can deliver 15.4 Watts over cat five cables, and the 802.3 POE plus can deliver up to 30 Watts over cat five cables with 25.5 Watts available to the devices. So that's the difference. And I think it's important to understand that. Then there are some differences, ladies, and gentlemen, with the finishes and knowing how they look and stuff like that. So, you know, those are cosmetic, but you do pay a little more money for, you know, some nicer finishes, you know, like you have the satin finish or some have black face plate.
John C. Morley: (10:07)
And then, the top of the line includes the two face plates, satin nickel, and Venetian bronze. So you get the ability to switch which is pretty cool. Now, most of the cameras have a 160?. The first one has 160?. The video ring doorbell three also has a 160? for what it is. And then the ones going down, you have a 155? on the video doorbell wiring. All right. So you'll probably say to me, John, this is a little confusing. No, it's not confusing, but they tried to make this flexible and give people options. Like one has a built-in battery or wired. Removable battery or wired. Removable battery wired or just wired.
John C. Morley: (11:03)
So for example, the video doorbell wired, the video doorbell pro, the video doorbell pro two, the video doorbell elite. Okay. Guess what? Those models are only wired. So that's important to know. They're all asking for high-speed internet. They all do 1080P; however, the one that is a video doorbell pro two does 1536P HD plus. Now there's another difference. Is that the video ring doorbell? 2023, three plus. Okay. And the four and the video doorbell wiring. Okay. So those five do black and white only. So if you're looking for one that does color, you must go to video doorbell pro, video doorbell pro 2, and the video doorbell elite. Interestingly enough, the ones that do color, I think this is an interesting observation that I've made; most of them are wired except for the one that's black and white, which is just the video doorbell four, and that one does black and white.
John C. Morley: (12:42)
As I mentioned, all the other three do color the higher ones. So the question is, which one do you get? Well, the video ring doorbell came with different iterations and generations of the product with new features. When you're thinking about a doorbell and want the wired, you're going to look at the wire, the pro 2, the four, or the ring video doorbell leap. So if you're building a new house, most people will make the ring video doorbell leap because it's sleek and sexy and can connect to your network very easily. And the nice thing about it is it supports the POE standard. That's the only one that will support the POE standard, ladies and gentlemen. The other ones do not provide their power. So you know, that's pretty important.
John C. Morley: (13:40)
So if I was putting this on a new home and it was a POE, I would go for the video doorbell elite. If I didn't wanna do POE, then the video doorbell pro two would be perfectly fine. I mean, nothing wrong with that. And so the video doorbell is interesting because it allows people to store the data, and then it goes up to the cloud or locally, depending on, on you know, how they have it set up. And so, under its policies ring, and I quote, reserves the right to respond immediately to urgent law enforcement requests for information in cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person. According to the letter, the company also requires police to fill out a special emergency request form if there is an urgent need to bypass the normal law enforcement process. So in each of the 11 cases that came up this year Amazon's VP of public policy Brian Hussman, he wrote, and I quote, "ring determined that the police requests met the imminent danger threshold and provided the information without delay" Hussman's letter said, and I quote "ring currently partners with 2061 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments that can request surveillance data from ring doorbells."
John C. Morley: (15:13)
Interesting. they said it represented a fivefold increase from 2019. So I think the good thing about it is that people know that when they buy a ring doorbell, they're getting peace of mind. Okay. The very interesting thing is that you have to realize one thing, though, that you are allowing your data to be stored and your privacy to be compromised. If you know, you don't like the fact that somebody comes to your home and maybe it's a surprise or something, I mean, nothing wrong, but they still have access to that data, even though they don't do anything with it, they still have access to it. So it is kind of a double-edged sword. So again, I'm happy they're doing that and putting a lot of people away, but let's still be mindful that it's got a challenge regarding security.
John C. Morley: (16:08)
So the founder of TikTok has stepped down, he is the founder and owner of Bike Dance, and he resigns as the CEO. Bike Dance CEO announced he's stepping down from his role leading the company with TikTok. His name is Zang zing, and he co-founded Bike Dance in 2012. And he'll move to another position at the company, and fellow co-founder Leon Rubu will become the new CEO. Leon personally runs HR at Bike Dance. So Zang says, "I worry, I'm still relying too much on the ideas I had before starting the company. And haven't challenged me by updating those concept steps. I think someone else can better drive progress through areas like improved daily management". And he quotes to say quoting "the truth is I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager.
I'm more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles at leveraging these theories to further reduce management work rather than managing people. Certainly, I'm not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming about what may be possible". Ah, so interesting, but I think there's more to this than he's leading on. All right. So Facebook or meta, depending on what you want to call them these days, Mr. Zuckerberg says they may allow you to create multiple profiles under your account. Facebook is doing this and is currently testing it because they want to tailor a better experience. And they want more users on the platform. And thus, you could have a business Facebook profile. You could have a personal profile on Facebook. I think it's gonna get more confusing.
John C. Morley: (18:18)
That's my feeling. But the question is, Why is Facebook allowing multiple profiles? What's the real reason they say it's to heal, to help tailor their experience based on interest and relationships, but, you know, nothing they ever say is very forthright. So I don't trust anything. They say they're gonna be able to set up five profiles. And the profiles don't need to include users' real names and identities, and they hope that more profiles will increase interactions and posts. All right. I don't know. I think it's gonna become more of a mess. We'll just have to wait and see what they're doing. In other news, crypto miners, we've said the crypto world is kind of going down. You guys know that, but something very interesting is going on. Crypto miners are defending the gigawatt scale energy usage called out by Congress. The latest tweet by tech crunch. This is a mess. You know, crypto monitors are defending this scale of energy usage. And so my question is, what the heck is going on? And I have to believe it is a ploy to take the crypto minor world down. I have gotta believe that. I said they were citing disturbing levels of power used by the cryptocurrency minors and a group of Democrats led by Senator Elizabeth Warren. He is urging the environmental protection agency and the department of energy to crack down on the controversial industry. It's funny because when you get things like this, nobody seems to bother anything, but then when there's suddenly controversy, what do you do? And I think it comes down to the fact that they have to find a gray area or a way that they can upset the Apple car. I've seen this a lot in local communities, and if they can't find a way to trip you up legally, they have to find some way in the gray. And I wanna quote the United States, just seven firms have built more than 1.045 gigawatts of capacity for crypto mining purposes, the report states, and this is enough capacity to power all the residences in Houston, Texas.
John C. Morley: (21:02)
So a lot of people want crypto shut down. And I believe it is going to shut down, but not right now, but it is on its way down. It's already had big losses, and all the people I knew when the pandemic started were so gung-ho about crypto. Now they're like nowhere to be found. Their emails are disconnected; their cell phone doesn't work. They have like taken themselves off the grid. I know one person I talked to a few weeks, and I said, hey, what happened? Oh, John, you know, I pulled myself off of LinkedIn. I pulled myself off other social media, and I don't do email anymore. What about your cell phone? Yeah, I don't have that anymore. Well, it's like, they're trying to hide because they stayed and sold a bad bag of goods, and they just want to be disassociated with anyone and everyone that they might have ever told because they're afraid of what could happen.
John C. Morley: (22:10)
Well, we'll see. We'll see, as you just watch what's going on, and I'll tell you the federal government doesn't want something. It's not happening. All right. In other news, the federal trade commission warns tech companies to misuse health data or personal health information. We call it PHI. What's been happening is people have been using data that is personal health industry related. And they have been gathering that data for other financial purposes, but things that might be at a conflict of interest or things that might not be, let's just say, too legal. And so even things like the abortion data, we talked about that, I gather that this is just a start, and not too long ago, the FTC renewed its vow to investigate or Sue companies that use Americans' digital data in unfair or deceptive ways following the executive order by the Biden administration that explicitly called for it and other agencies to consider steps to pro protect abortion seekers.
John C. Morley: (23:32)
It's all political, isn't it? It's funny how nothing works, but it suddenly becomes political. I don't quite understand that very much. I don't. I know that it's very interesting what people are doing and whether it's social media, whether it's general media or whether it's just press, I feel that people will exploit these areas if they think they can get away with it, just like people were exploiting the crypto world. We see what's happening; they're getting their hands tied, but is doing something unethical right in our world, regardless of whether you believe in it or don't believe in it? I think it comes down to how it hurts others.
John C. Morley: (24:41)
I think that's the question. Just like what's going on with the gas industry, right? What's going on in Russia? Is this fair to all Americans? No. In case you were wondering about the highest gas prices in United States America, just in case you know. I'm sure you probably want to know this, but the gas prices are climbing every day, right? And as the end of June, California and Hawaii were $5.60. Alaska was $5.57, Nevada was $5.57, and Oregon was $5.49. So, what are the states with the highest gas prices if we were to ask ourselves? Be obvious: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Illinois. Okay. And those the highest, and then the second highest would be your Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. But just to give you the numbers in Wyoming, $4.90, one year ago $3.27, it increased 49.9% in Colorado, $4.91. One year ago, $3.42 increased 43.6% in Montana, currently $4.96. Approximately one year ago, a $3.08 increase in gas by over 60%, 60.9%.
John C. Morley: (26:33)
This is an abomination. I mean, this is terrible. And I feel right now that people are exploiting me every which way. I know I had a family member who would send flowers to a viewing. And normally, those flowers would be $50-70. The place was right down the street from home. And they told my mom, well, it's about $350-400. And she's like, why that everything's gone up because of COVID, you know, I'm sick of people using that excuse and exploiting our public because it is unfair. And gentlemen, it's not fair to exploit people anytime. He isn't, but people still feel it's okay to exploit. So, the question you might be asking me is, John, when will gas prices come down? We don't know. Everyone says the answer is not very simple. I have to believe it's very political. And everyone's saying; it's gonna be a while until gas prices come back to something we're used to managing.
John C. Morley: (28:15)
Crude oil is expected to go down, which we've already started to see, but it isn't gonna be likely until we hit 2023; who knows what can happen before then? I mean, anything. So don't blame the gas station owners because they have less control over the situation than we'd like to think. It's a very complex global landscape out there. And as much as they say, it's not political; it's political. I'm sorry. It is completely, completely political. I think gas prices aren't coming down because I don't know if somebody might have a relative or son who owns a battery company. And in my feeling, that's a conflict of interest, but they'll find other ways and reasons to get around the story's truth. They really will.
John C. Morley: (29:28)
They'll find other reasons and ways to get around the story. We're gonna have to wait and see what's going on. And other news you guys are gonna be very happy with is that TikTok will be moving their data to the US, Oracle servers. And so, they claim that some of it has been done, and others are still working on it. Now with having data on the US servers, this should change some responsibility, some liability, and they said that they are doing this by its American users. They didn't say China. They just said the American users through servers controlled by Oracle, which, as you guys know, is a Silicon Valley company. I don't know. I feel that I can't trust this, but another interesting point is that TikTok added that it would still store its backups of the information, potentially complicating the effort.
John C. Morley: (31:05)
So why does this China company wanna store our US data? You see, I think that's wrong. If Oracle servers are going to back up, then there should be no ties to them. It should be stored. And then there should be a US backup service. They're just playing games. I remember doing business with a factory in China several years ago. And they told me, we like you, we wanna do business with you. It was all BS. They told me they weren't making money. Of course, they were making money. And then they were trying to get me to do more because they said it's taking time. A lot of it, it's just all BS. I don't believe anything they say. I don't. So yes, they have grown TikTok and all that.
John C. Morley: (31:58)
But I think it's really important that the data be stored in the United States and the backup be stored in the United States. Because if it isn't, that means it's on non-emitted grounds, it's because they are in another country, and then other rules apply. So let's stop jerking around. Let's get the data in the US, and let's get the backups in the US, and let's get their clause off the data. I mean, this is just ridiculous because otherwise, I'd have to say that maybe there's another interest of this Chinese company that they're trying to exploit us. Maybe they're trying to grab data that shouldn't be theirs. Hmm. Not nice to say, but I don't have much confidence or trust in this company. I'm just being honest.
John C. Morley: (32:49)
I know a lot of people say to me, John, is installing the TikTok app a security problem for your phone? Well, TikTok has access to a lot of personal information. Okay. I typically don't allow it to get access to any of my data. And according to Chester Wisneski, a research scientist at sofas antivirus company, agreed, "TikTok doesn't pose any more risk to a user than any other social media sharing application.
John C. Morley: (33:42)
All right. So I think the issue comes down to people and what they're doing with the data. I mean, I think that's really what it is at the end of the day. And we all have a responsibility to make sure that we're accountable. And to the best of our knowledge, our systems are accountable. So right now I can't find any direct reason not to trust them, but I'm just telling you I don't trust them. So if I upload data, I upload content. It's not personal data. It's not financial data. It's stuff to make people laugh. It's fun stuff. It tips, but it's nothing very personal. That's the thing I wanna share with you. Hey, ladies, and gentlemen, this has been an amazing show. And you guys know we're gonna be bringing back our live shows broadcasting in Oakland, New Jersey.
John C. Morley: (34:39)
We're excited about that, but that is coming. And we're very excited about that. And you know where it's gonna go and all these great things. But the question I have, the last question I really wanna ask you is, are the tech giants shrinking the New York city plans? Like Meta, Amazon, or Facebook, whatever day or name we wanna call them for the day. Have they scaled back plans to expand to New York City" Bloomberg reported citing anonymous sources that both tech giants are backpedaling in the Hudson yards where Facebook's parent meta has suspended plans to build out new offices and eCommerce. Behemoth is reducing the amount of space it intends to lease. The adjustments come as hiring has begun to slow at tech companies and after many moves toward remote work options.
John C. Morley: (35:47)
So it's interesting. I think these companies are still scared. They don't know what's going to happen or go on. Ladies and gentlemen, I am John C. Morley, a serial entrepreneur. It's been a privilege, a pleasure, and an honor to be with you again on another JMOR Tech Talk Show. We have another great show coming for you. When? Next week, the last Friday of the month will be July 29. Be sure to tune back in. You know where to find us if you missed any of our shows. If you'd like to become a guest on our show, go to www.jmor.com, click on it, reach out today and apply to become a guest. We'd love great guests that want to bring value to our show. Again, this is not a sales show. This is all about inspiration, motivation, technology, and awareness. I thank you so much for watching today, and you know what? I'm gonna see you guys. Yeah. I'm gonna see you guys next Friday. Enjoy and remember to be smart when you use technology. It's just like a weapon. If you use it properly, it's not gonna harm anyone. If you use it improperly or irresponsibly, the results can be devastating. Have yourself a great rest of your weekend.