Author: Roan Yboa

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Life & Technology – 2GB 15th February 2025

My Appearance on ‘Happy Families’ Podcast – Hosted By Dr Justin Coulson  Why did I start a business making smart devices safer for kids, for families all around the world? Dr Justin Coulson wanted to know why, so I was invited onto his podcast this week to talk devices, big tech and how to better manage screen engagement in the family. Since starting G-mee in 2019 a lot has changed in the world and we are responding in how we design and develop our devices, the software we developed that better protects families and the places in the world we are offering our devices for sale. We discuss that and much more in the podcast. 

Listen Here

 We have also generated a discount promo code for the phone we are discussing on the podcast, the G-mee Connect Pro – $149 ($40 saving) and free shipping if you use the promo code – ‘HAPPY’  More details here  

We Just Published Australia’s Most Indepth Galaxy S25 Review Samsung’s flagship is now on general sale, and before you buy you should learn all there is to know about the handset. Lots of good, some bad, and some features not changed since the S24 last year. 
All the details are here.  

Spontaneous car fires. Is your smartphone or laptop to blame? (consumer advice)

  In 2024, there were nearly three thousand unexplained spontaneous car fires (excluding EVs and Hybrids) in NSW alone.Fire Departments do not keep granular statistics on car fire causes. They increasingly suspect lithium-ion smartphones and laptops are a significant cause, especially when the fire starts inside a parked car. Why the significant increase in spontaneous car fires? The RACV conducted temperature tests in parked cars. It found that when the ambient outside temperature is 30°, the interior temperature reaches over 70° in scant minutes.Stamford University USA said, “The cars’ colour does not significantly impact interior temperature increases when the car is parked in direct sunlight. The temperature inside a car increases because of the greenhouse effect.” The greenhouse effect is caused by the glass acting as a one-way conductor. It lets in the harmful long wavelengths that cause heat but not vice versa.

 READ MORE..  
Guests and Topics on the Show
We spoke with Aman Gaur, Head of Legal, Policy and Advocacy at the Electric Vehicle Council, about the vehicle-to-grid roadmap and what it means for Australia’s energy future. He explained how EVs could play a key role in stabilising the grid and reducing electricity costs for consumers. Electric Vehicle Council CEO Julie Delvecchio noted that the roadmap for bidirectional charging has the potential to unlock significant economic and energy system benefits and coordinated action is needed to realise its full potential.

“Australia is a world leader in rooftop solar. This gives us a running start to be a world leader in bidirectional EV charging as well, if we choose to be. Our abundant solar energy creates opportunities for EVs to store excess daytime generation and discharge it to the grid when needed,” Ms Delvecchio said.

“Bidirectional EV charging is one of the keys to unlocking lower energy prices for everyone, not just the EV drivers, and to provide electricity reliability. Please check out details of the Everything Electric event being held in Sydney in March, all the details are here.  

We also caught up with Roborock at CES, Marcus Goh, Regional Marketing Manager for Roborock in Asia Pacific, joined us to discuss the company’s vision for 2025. He shared insights into the latest innovations in robotic vacuums, smart home cleaning, and what’s next for Roborock in the coming year.

Roborock is redefining home cleaning with its latest innovations. At CES, the company introduced cutting-edge robot vacuums and stick vacuums designed for efficiency, power, and convenience. Whether you need hands-free cleaning or a powerful cordless vacuum, Roborock has a solution.

Read more on Roborock’s Innovations here. 

Here’s a copy of our weekly newsletter.

Life and Technology – Saturday February 15 2025

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Life & Technology – 2GB 8th February 2025

Rooftop Solar Part 3 – working as it should

Rooftop Solar Part 3 is the third in a four-part series that explains the issues of installing solar panels and, optionally, a battery and what we consider best practices.You should read these first to get the backstory. Rooftop Solar Part 1 – where do I begin? examines my decision to go solar and what I found in dealing with the better-known solar installer brands. Rooftop Solar Part 2 – All you need to know before you start looks at some of the shonky tricks to get you to order a system—whether it suits you or not. We looked at the incidence and tricks of upselling as not one of our readers paid the ‘super low advertised price’.  
READ MORE..  
Guests and Topics on the Show
This week we spoke with Dean Williams, Partner Specialist Systems Engineer at Norton, about the alarming rise in love scams. He explained how scammers manipulate emotions to steal money and shared practical steps to stay protected.  During the call Dean discussed their FREE app ‘Norton Genie’ that will assist in helping you tell if something is a SCAM OR NOT. Dean mentioned they make it free so they can feed their database with lots of current scams so it can help you more.  

More details from the report –  Australians looking for love online invest an average 8 (7.93) hours of effort a week and scammers are exploiting this, resulting in financial impacts. The 2025 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report – Online Dating reveals among current dating app users who have been targeted by a scam (44%) common types of dating scams for those who admit to falling for a scam 43%) include:Romance scams – 47% Catfishing – 29% a Fake Dating site – 26%  Visa or immigration scams – 25% Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby scam – 19%  The findings are part of the 2025 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report – Online Dating, exploring Australians’ dating apps approach and the associated risks. 

We also caught up with Nathan Rigger, Head of Product & Services – Mobile at Samsung Australia, to discuss the Samsung S25. He broke down what’s new, and why you should consider this as your next device. 

The Samsung Galaxy S25-series represents its best ‘glass slab’ offerings in 2025. Australia gets the S25 Ultra (SM-S938), S25+ (SM-S936) and S25 (SM-S931).

This year, they all use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a slightly overclocked version of the standard SD8 Elite (4.47 vs 4.32Ghz). Samsung says that’s not the only change under the hood. READ MORE..

And you can pre-order it from Harvey Norman and take advantage of a lot of the bonuses that come with pre-ordering. 

Here’s a copy of our weekly newsletter.

Life and Technology – Saturday February 8 2025
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Life & Technology – 2GB 1st February 2025

Your Android Phone and Device Security 
We have written up changes in how device security is being managed for your Android device. From the apps being used to security patches being released. If you have an Android phone its important to be across the security support being provided to you. We have written it up here.  

China’s DeepSeek is not for Aussies (Consumer Advice) 

China’s DeepSeek Artificial intelligence app wiped trillions off the US Share Market by allegedly releasing a new way to do AI—faster, cheaper, better, and without requiring NVIDIA’s expensive Neural Processor Units. That is a hell of an impact for a Chinese company registered in 2023 that released its DeepSeek A.I. Assistant on 27 January 2025. Let’s not get too techy—you only need to know that AI is trained on large language models (LLMs). For example, the contents of an animal database allow it to identify different animals, and the contents of a medical database will enable it to identify specific cancers and ailments.

This is phase one—machine learning. It then uses AI-programmed responses to react to the stimuli. AI experts have long said that AI is only as useful as the LLMs on which it is trained. DeepSeek stated that its training cost US$6 million compared to $100m for OpenAI’s GPT-4 and required only a tenth of the computing power. Hence, NVIDIA’s share price crashed along with any other US AI company, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, et al. 
DeepSeek was initially trained on 97% Chinese LLMs  
Guests and Topics on the Show
Australia’s broadband network is getting a major upgrade. NBN Co has announced new plans to upgrade the remaining homes and businesses still on Fibre to the Node (FTTN). What does this mean for users, and how will it improve speed and reliability?

Jane McNamara, General Manager of Media and External Communications at NBN Co. joined us this week to discuss about the recent update.  As we discussed on the show, use the address checker on the NBN Website here. You can then see if the upgraded fibre to the home service (called fttp) is available to you. If it is you will need to upgrade your speed tier to a minimum of 100 megabit speed service to take advantage of the fibre connection upgrade.  During the show I talked to the price difference between a 50 megabit speed vs a 100 megabit speed tier. I used the Buddy Telco pricing guide as the reference that will currently offer you a 50 megabit for $75 pm vs 100 megabit for $85 pm.

 Other prices and specials here (NOT SPONSORED).    

TCL continues to push boundaries in display technology, with exciting new innovations coming in 2025. From Mini LED advancements to smarter AI-powered picture enhancements, what can we expect from their latest range? Jason Carrick, General Manager – Sales at TCL Australia, sat down with us at CES to give us a sneak peek.   

Here’s a copy of our weekly newsletter.