Amazon’s Avalanche of New Hardware Announcements - DTNS 5115

0:04Eóin Tuohy: This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 30th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories and help each other understand.

0:13Tom Merritt: Oh, today, Jason is back from Ireland. Hey, how many Guinnesses did you have?

0:21Eóin Tuohy: Oh, man, if I had to, oh, God, I don't want to add them up, but it's so many. I'm serious. I drank so much Guinness while I was there.

0:28Tom Merritt: He is mostly Guinness now, folks. One of the things he did there was check out a tiny wearable that helps detect head injuries during impact sports. And of course, we also are going to talk about all the new hardware Amazon announced.

0:41Eóin Tuohy: Oh boy, it's so much. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Tom Merritt. Let's start with what you need to know with Big Story.

0:48Eóin Tuohy: Amazon's got a lot of stories to tell today. Apparently, they held a big hardware event in New York City with a bunch of new hardware taking stage. And so we'll just kind of split this up. I mean, there's so much here. We could spend all day talking about them. We'll just kind of break it up into little mini segments. First, a few new Echo speakers. There's the Echo Dot Max, which is a$100 speaker. It's powered by its AZ3 chip. Amazon says it's, quote, designed to run AI edge models of the future to enable better conversational detection. So you're going to have some really great conversations with your Echo speaker.

1:25Eóin Tuohy: The Max gets two drivers with three times the bass response of the Echo Dot Gen 5. So sound improvements all around. That's kind of a focus of the Echo revisions, at least one part of the focus. The Echo Studio, which is its first update to that model since 2019, is going to cost$220. It offers three drivers, also a woofer, along with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos support. And what's really cool about this is Amazon announced Alexa Home Theater, which allows for connecting up to five Echo speakers together in a home theater environment. So you can imagine having these dotted, no pun intended, around your living room.

2:05Eóin Tuohy: There are also upgraded Echo Shows with displays, the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11, higher resolution LCD screens than previous Echo Shows, and also improved speakers, optional stands, more responsive touchscreen. and it has an Omnisense system that actually lets the Echo Show recognize users and automatically display personal data, including integration with Aura. So big upgrade to the Echo series.

2:33Tom Merritt: Yeah. They all look like that. What was that Google device that came and went really fast? It was a big sphere 10 years ago.

2:43Eóin Tuohy: The Nexus Q?

2:44Tom Merritt: The Nexus Q. Thank you. Yeah.

2:45Eóin Tuohy: I have one downstairs.

2:46Tom Merritt: I have one up here. They all look like the Nexus Q. They have the textured cloth exterior, though. And yeah, I mean, honestly, if I were to interpret all of Amazon's marketing speak, these are going to sound better. They're going to have Panos Panay. This is Panos Panay since he came over from Microsoft. His first time shepherding a product all the way through the cycle was emphasizing these are going to sound good. You're going to want to play music on them. They stole a page from Apple's playbook. I don't know if you remember Apple saying like, you can take all of your HomePods and turn them into surround sound.

3:23Tom Merritt: And that never went anywhere. We'll see if this goes anywhere. You're going to have to buy all new Echoes to get this. But sure, some people may do that. These are more expensive, too. But I went ahead and ordered the Echo Studio because I want to test that music capability. and you get the new voice assistant, what's her name plus, out of the box. You don't have to wait to be invited in if you buy one of these, so that's cool.

3:52Eóin Tuohy: Oh, it's a little in there. So just touching back on what you just said about Apple's kind of multi-speaker surround thing, that didn't go anywhere? Like, that seems like such a no-brain, like, I've always wondered why Google Home devices could not do that. Like, it just seems to make sense to, like, link them up and have them be -

4:10Tom Merritt: Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to go buy. As soon as you're like, well, I have to buy five of these. You know what's easier? Just buying a Vizio soundbar and rear speakers for$179, right?

4:23Eóin Tuohy: And are these really going to sound better than when you do cost to cost and all that?

4:27Tom Merritt: And then you have to put them all near each other, which is kind of not the point. I have a bunch of Echoes in my house, but they're all in different rooms. Right. So, yeah, I think that's one of those things that may not catch on again.

4:41Eóin Tuohy: we'll see see i saw that i was like oh that's a great idea but yeah it's one of those things

4:46Tom Merritt: that sounds great it is it is like uh it can plan your travel for you right sounds great on stage and then as soon as you sit down to do it you're like actually no i just want to do this myself yeah totally uh and then the echo shows they kind of look like um look like balls with the screens stuck on them so i'm not sure if i love the uh the look but the screens themselves look beautiful They did a great job redesigning the screens.

5:10Eóin Tuohy: Cool. Well, that is not all. Speaking of screens, very interesting to me is the new Fire TV Stick and kind of Fire TV news based around the event. As far as the stick is concerned, primarily here what we're talking about is the operating system underpinnings no longer using Android. So up until now, Android's been the OS of choice underneath Amazon's Fire TV Stick series, whether you realized it was Android or not. And you probably didn't because it's not like Amazon led with that. Well, the new$40 Fire TV 4K Select Stick will run a new Vega OS. It's called Vega OS instead. Amazon claims the new OS will offer improved speed over the previous OS.

5:52Eóin Tuohy: But ultimately, I think it just puts more power and control into Amazon's hands. So I'm curious to see what that actually looks like from kind of an execution standpoint. Still running the old Fire TV OS based on Android, though. Amazon also showed off the Fire TV Omni QLED flagship series, faster processor, a jump of 40 % performance, 60 % brightness. Also, its 2-series and 4-series displays are getting updates. They range between 32 to 55-inch panels, very minimal bezels, so very sleek-looking. New TVs have a sensor that wakes up the TV when you walk into the room. That's neat. Kind of like what the frame TVs have been doing in recent years.

6:33Eóin Tuohy: The Omni starts at$479, while the 2 and 4 series models start at$159 shipping in October. And then all the new Echo and Fire TV devices will come with Alexa Plus out of the box. So that's the improved voice assistant, early preview. Like you said, you get it. You get it right away. So yay, you get that if you buy in. It's included with Prime. are available for$20 a month on its own. If you don't like the improvements, Amazon will let you downgrade to old Alexa since it's technically in early access.

7:03Tom Merritt: Yeah, this is going to drive some sales. That was one of the other reasons I bought an Echo Studio was like, oh, I can jump the line if I get this. I will be curious to see if that means it shows up on all of my Echoes once I'm in the program, right? Once I activate this one. So that'll be interesting to test. But yeah, the Vega OS, they say, look, you'll never know. The interface is the same. It's the same interface. And they say they've got all the apps, all the streaming apps, which would be the other thing. I'm wondering if they're doing some emulation on Android apps to facilitate that because they need to make sure they've got Netflix and Hulu and the gaming apps too, which they say will be available on the Fire TV stick like Game Pass and all that.

7:47Tom Merritt: So yeah, I'm curious how Vega OS works. Obviously, they get more control of the stack. They can provide their own chips, as you mentioned earlier, with the Echoes. So that's something I would expect to see happen in the future as well. Maybe they need to keep the old Android-based Fire TV to work on the chips in the televisions because they don't make chips for the television. I don't know. Yeah.

8:08Eóin Tuohy: And when does that potentially change somewhere? Yeah. Exactly. Is that sooner rather than later? Yeah.

8:13Tom Merritt: But mostly these are just marginal upgrades, right? Better looking screens, better performance, all of that. So I wouldn't dump your existing Fire device if it works, Fire TV device if it works.

8:25Eóin Tuohy: No, absolutely. Okay.

8:27Tom Merritt: Some Kindles and Ring devices, and then we've covered it all. Let's start with the Kindles. Amazon announced new versions of the Kindle Scribe. These are the e-readers meant for note-taking, so they come with a stylus. There is now an 11-inch version up from 10.2 inches, which weighs only 400 grams. That's down from 433 grams. It's also 5.4 millimeters thick, which is thinner than an iPad Air, but they called it paper thin. And I'm like, paper's not that thick. Well, actually. Actually. But they're nice looking. They have an improved LED lighting system that keeps the bezel smaller. The gap between the glass and the screen is reduced.

9:04Tom Merritt: So it feels more like you're writing directly with the tip of the stylus. Improved processor and memory. They're saying your page turns will feel 40 % faster, which probably just means that it will feel more responsive. Among the software features are the ability to export notes directly to Microsoft OneNote. Hey, is that the Panos Panay effect there? You can also access documents from Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. Improved search and summarization capabilities here. They've got some large language model magic, including a feature that can recap what you've read in a book so far. depending on the book.

9:36Tom Merritt: Not all Kindle books will support that. The three new Kindle Scribe models are more expensive as well. So the smallest, cheapest one starts at$430. That one doesn't have a front light. That's up$30 over the previous entry-level price. The standard Kindle Scribe starts at$500 now, and the Kindle Scribe ColorSoft, which has a color ink screen, is$630, and they'll all launch in the coming months.

10:02Eóin Tuohy: Okay. I mean, Kindle, still rocking, still rolling. Amazon's long-term kind of hardware effort. And Kindle Scribe.

10:09Tom Merritt: So they're going after Remarkable with this. This isn't just the, like, I want to read a book. This is, I want to take notes and all of that.

10:15Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, and I think it's important to, you know, from a stylist perspective, I've definitely had enough interaction with different stylist solutions to know, like, that it sounds insignificant when you say bringing the stylist closer to where the actual marking is happening, like removing the layers of glass that get it closer. But it really does go a long way to kind of convincing your kind of through your use case that it feels a little bit more like writing on actual paper, that sort of thing. So it sounds insignificant, but it actually does make a difference in usability.

10:44Tom Merritt: The Remarkables are cheaper. So if you really want note-taking, I would say probably look at the Remarkables a second time. But if you're like, I read Kindle books. I want the Kindle system for my e-books and also maybe take some notes. Then look at these, although they are more expensive. 630, I mean, that is pricey. Yeah. Finally, the new Ring devices have improved video resolution. The$180 Ring Wired Doorbell and the$60 Indoor Cam Plus have 2K resolution. And then there's 4K in the$250 Ring Wired Doorbell Pro 4K, the$200 Outdoor Cam Pro 4K, and the$250 Spotlight Cam Pro 4K, as well as the$280 Floodlight Cam Pro, say it with me, 4K.

11:32Tom Merritt: There's also power over Ethernet versions of the Spotlight Cam Pro, Outdoor Cam Pro, and Wired Doorbell Elite, so you don't have to run separate power. There's facial recognition for improved ability to tell whether you know the person at the door, and if so, who it is. The voice assistant, the improved voice assistant with a plus at the end is coming to the doorbells, so it can answer for you and ask questions and give instructions. It already does a little bit of this. It can ask very on-rails questions. This will give it a little more dynamicism, so it can say, oh, is this a delivery? and then pass that to you so you can decide whether you want to jump in or not.

12:11Tom Merritt: It's a little bit like the call screening function on Android. Yeah, that's true. And a new search party mode is there for neighbors who all use new rings that have this. So I'm not sure how many neighborhoods this will qualify, but if it does, you can help find lost pets. So if you live in a neighborhood where enough people have new rings that have Alexa Plus on them and you got a picture of your pet and it ran away, you can send it to all your neighbors. And if they cooperate, then the rings can all look for evidence of the dog running by.

12:42Eóin Tuohy: So it might be a little limited in the beginning. But I mean, I can tell you, like in my neighborhood, when I go out for a walk with my dogs, not when they're lost, although it has happened. But lots of the doors have ring doorbells.

12:56Tom Merritt: But do they have the ones that can support this? Exactly. It's going to take a while to get here, maybe.

13:00Eóin Tuohy: To get everybody. Yeah, yeah. But eventually, yeah.

13:02Tom Merritt: Good point.

13:03Eóin Tuohy: While you were reading through that, CamPro 4K stopped sounding like real words to me.

13:09Tom Merritt: Outdoor CamPro, Spotlight CamPro, Floodlight CamPro.

13:13Eóin Tuohy: Weird when that happens.

13:14Tom Merritt: DTNS CamPro is made possible by you, the listener. Big thanks to Chris Allen, Reed Fishler, Larry Bailey, and Mike Rogers. We could not do it without y 'all. Thanks for supporting us at patreon.com slash DTNS.

13:32Eóin Tuohy: yes there's more we need to know today let's get right to the briefs yep spotify announced that

13:37Tom Merritt: its founder and ceo daniel eck is gonna shift out of that role uh or dance out of that role sing out of that role end his song as ceo anyway because do the hokey pokey out of that role he puts his right investment stake in and becomes executive chairman at the start of 2026 in his place, Alex Nordstrom and Gustav Soderstrom will lead the company in co-CEO roles after having already acted as co-president for the past three years. Co-CEOs are the thing these days.

14:08Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, you told me that's what I was going to say. Obviously, it's in vogue.

14:12Tom Merritt: The board is confident that Soderstrom and Nordstrom will receive shareholder approval. Eck told staff in a company, Momo, that he wants to spend more of his time on strategy, capital allocation, regulatory efforts, and the calls that will shape the next decade for Spotify. So it sounds like he's not leaving. He's just jumping out of the day-to-day stuff.

14:33Eóin Tuohy: And in fact, they're still going to be largely reporting to him. One of the things, and he doesn't mention this at all, but I've definitely heard a lot just in music, like musician and creator circles about kind of artist pushback on X investment in defense tech company. I think it's Helsing. So I doubt that this has an immediate impact or is the result of something like that. He certainly didn't mention it, but it does have me a little curious. Apple-owned Beats just launched the PowerBeats Fit Earbuds. That's replacing the Beats Fit Pro. The new buds feature an improved fit, better durability, redesigned wingtips, so they'll hold in place a little better.

15:15Eóin Tuohy: The case itself actually shrank down by 17%. And like before, like the model that came before it, the buds are IPX4, so they're water resistant. They have a similar sound and noise cancellation quality. They do use the older H1 chip. It can last around seven hours, but only if you're not using ANC. I don't know what the rating there is if you are, but definitely less before needing a charge. The Powerbeats Fit earbuds, shipping in four colors this Thursday. So if you want to get them, you can get it for$200.

15:48Tom Merritt: Just in time for people to return their AirPods Pro 3. Actually, most people have said they do seem to fit better, but a lot of people swear by the Beats Fit. So having new Beats Fit is a good thing. OpenAI is getting ready to launch a new Sora 2 video model. And along with it, a TikTok-style social app that will reportedly feature only vertical-generated video clips. Wired says that the app won't have access to your camera roll. So you have to make something in chat GPT or Sora, and then you can share it. That's the only way. Clips will be capped at 10 seconds. It will include identity verification.

16:26Tom Merritt: So you can let others remix videos using your likeness if you wish, and then get notified every time it's used. Wired says the app will prohibit some, I'm sorry, will prohibit the use of some copyrighted content. and separately, but sort of related to that, Wall Street Journal reporting that the Sora 2 model is going to offer rights holders the chance to block their work from appearing in Sora outputs. So when it says some copyrighted content, if a rights holder hasn't blocked it from Sora 2, then I guess you would be able to use it in this new social app. The new app and the new Sora 2 model could launch by the end of 2025, but no specific date.

17:05Eóin Tuohy: Didn't Meta announce something similar?

17:08Tom Merritt: Yes, Meta's doing this in their Meta AI app. I think this is a thing that some people who have a really fun time making these clips like, because then they can see what each other's doing. So it's not totally without a reason, but it's for enthusiasts from what I can tell.

17:23Eóin Tuohy: It is. And I mean, there is so much, you know, talking about creator pushback and everything when you're talking about YouTube and these other platforms. So many people that I come across their opinions on this stuff is like, man, my streams are just getting overrun by, you know, slop video. And so, you know, here's a social app that's dedicated to Slop Video. And if you want that, go there. If you would like Slop Video, please.

17:46Tom Merritt: Here it is. Enjoy the Slop. We say that jokingly and lovingly, people who make these and are like, they're not all Slop. I make really good stuff. I'm sure you do. And I've seen really good stuff, too.

17:56Eóin Tuohy: Absolutely. So have I. Opera has launched Opera Neon. That's its AI browser, a powered browser by AI with agentic AI hooks. Opera Neon can perform actions across browser tabs. Tell me if you've heard all of this before because they're all doing this stuff. Actions across tabs, automate tasks and workflows. So things like booking trips or shopping, kind of like you said, it just always works, right? It remains to be seen. Researching, synthesizing information from the open web, that sort of stuff. Opera shared that the browser can also use what they call a cloud computer to, quote, help you when you have big, hard tasks to solve and want to build new things to use later, either by yourself or with others.

18:40Eóin Tuohy: Still a little vague as far as what that actually means, when you get down to nuts and bolts, but that's what they're describing it as. Users who want to check it out now can sign up for the waitlist to get started.

18:51Tom Merritt: Yeah, I think this is a little more than it appears, honestly, because everybody is doing this sort of thing. But this is more like what the browser company did with Dia, where they ended development on Arc and said, we're going to build it from the ground up. This is Opera saying the same thing. If you want an agentic browser, you need to design it around agentic needs. So it can do things like browse the web for you. It can do things like chat. And then the cloud thing is you want it to do some things that you don't have to monitor. Do you want it to do more than a couple of things at once? Then yes, we can do it in the cloud for you.

19:23Tom Merritt: So if there's anything to agentic browsing at all, this is the approach. This and the DIA approach seem to offer the best possibility of it. So I put myself on the wait list because I would like to try this out and see if it's actually more useful when it's designed for this versus some of these browsers, which I'm like, well, I could just do that in a tab on cloud, right? Like, why do I need your browser to do that?

19:47Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Being able to kind of set these systems up in the cloud so that maybe they operate on a regular kind of schedule or whatever without you having to trigger it or whatever.

19:57Tom Merritt: And the interface just makes it more conducive to like, oh, I don't have to think in two visual languages. It's all about the agent.

20:04Eóin Tuohy: Yeah. Interesting.

20:05Tom Merritt: DoorDash introduced something that is probably less than it seems. It's called Dot, a small WALL-E looking autonomous robot painted red and designed for food and package deliveries, but really designed to be recognizable as DoorDash's dot, because it can do what all the other little sidewalk robots can do. It can travel on roads, bike lanes, sidewalks, 20 miles per hour, 30 pounds worth of cargo. You can store six pizzas in the cargo space. It opens up like a large mouth. That's kind of different and cool, you know, so it's vomiting your food up to you. Dot is also small enough to fit through doorways.

20:44Tom Merritt: So I guess it could go into larger buildings, you know, like apartments and stuff. The robot has eight external cameras, radar and LIDAR for obstacle avoidance and navigation. They are piloting it in Tempe and Mesa, Arizona, with plans to make DOT available to all 1.6 million Phoenix region residents by the end of 2025.

21:06Eóin Tuohy: So yeah, so it's just, it's so this, this sort of thing is really interesting to me from the perspective of kind of the general, I don't know, the general temperament or temperature around technology right now. And like, sometimes when I talk to people who aren't steeped in technology, I'm starting to pick up and detect this kind of like, I don't know, a pessimistic view. I'm sure, you know, people know what I'm talking about, kind of a pushback on like big tech and blah, blah, blah. And so when I see things like this, that are suddenly going to be out on the road, just kind of driving around and stuff, I wonder if in the current climate, people start seeing these as like targets of like you know what i hate big tech and this is a symbol of it

21:45Tom Merritt: these are all over san francisco they are all over los angeles they are all over new york city they are all over plenty of cities that i am not having those issues and we don't see like when it happens we see the story about it because it is rare and unusual and there was you know one in philadelphia i think that got a big uh big headline several years back but it's not like uh well it's like in the nation. Driven out of Philadelphia. So I look at this and I'm like, DoorDash is launching in Phoenix because they didn't have these in Phoenix. Also because Phoenix is very friendly to these kinds of things.

22:19Tom Merritt: It's where a lot of autonomous car companies have been operating. And so there's a little bit of DoorDash acting like they invented sidewalk deliveries in this announcement. I'm like, yeah, you're late to this game. You still might be best at it, making it look cute and all of that and recognizable. People may start to think of DoorDash when they think of sidewalk robots because of DOT. But certainly not the first to do it.

22:43Eóin Tuohy: Interesting. All right. Well, we've got a few quick headlines that are just kind of good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Anthropic has launched Claude Sonnet 4.5. It is a major update that includes new tools, really focused largely on coding. So code checkpoints, VS code integration, context editing, an agent SDK, and more advanced safety protections.

23:07Tom Merritt: Adobe launched its premier video editing app on iPhone for the first time with major editing tools for free and paid options that unlock cloud storage, generative AI credits, and advanced functions.

23:19Eóin Tuohy: And this is really interesting. I'm sure the team at Android Faithful is going to be talking about this tonight. I won't be on the show tonight. But F-Droid says Google's new developer verification and sideloading restrictions, that includes things which we've talked about in the past, registration requirements, personal information, along with payments, will consolidate Google's control over Android software. They're just kind of putting out a warning and saying this might actually kill alternative app stores like the one that F-Droid offers.

23:43Tom Merritt: And California's governor signed SB 53. It is the U.S.'s first AI safety law requiring major companies to publicly disclose safety and security protocols, report major incidents and protect whistleblowers. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper into your trip.

24:00Eóin Tuohy: Oh, let's do. Yes. So I, oh man, you know, some, some of the, the, the fun things in life come out of absolutely nowhere. A week prior to this trip, I had no clue that Dublin, Ireland was on my, on my future agenda, but I just got back from Dublin, Ireland. I was invited there by the folks at Enterprise Ireland, which is actually a government organization in Ireland that actively invests in and supports Irish startups. And they're looking to kind of broaden out that support, the awareness of Irish tech startups. They were showcasing, in this case, several Irish tech startups that are making waves in sports tech and med tech industries.

24:37Eóin Tuohy: It was all timed with a big NFL game that happened just last weekend. I was able to attend that. It was pretty awesome. I had a chance while I was there to talk to a few really cool companies and the founders of them. In this case, I started with my conversation with Ian Thuy, who is the founder and CEO of Sports Impact Technologies. And he and his team are really focused on head injury health. They use a little tiny behind-the-ear wearable sensor that tracks head impacts in real time. Hey, how's it going, Owen? It's nice to meet you. Great.

25:11Jason Howell: Likewise. Lovely to meet you.

25:12Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, so we're taking a look on this weekend. It's timed with the NFL game, big NFL game coming to Dubb. Are you going to the game?

25:19Jason Howell: I am. I am. So looking forward to it.

25:21Eóin Tuohy: What your company does is very related to what's going on with American football and basically all impact sports. Tell us a little bit about kind of the little wearable that you just showed off to us today and what it's all about.

25:33Jason Howell: Yeah, so in a nutshell, we make a wearable that detects head impacts as they happen. So we know head impacts is a big problem, as we say, in all impact sports. And really the problem is twofold. One is if a player receives a big concussion and continues to play, so the concussion was missed. But then the second one is the cumulative effects that we see with CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. So we said we want to get some objective measure out there that's capturing this data and able to tell us in real time if a player has got a head impact and then being able to look at those head impacts over their player and their career.

26:07Jason Howell: So, a wearable, I can show you the case. Yes.

26:09Eóin Tuohy: So, this isn't like a wearable you put on your wrist. Like, we're always talking about technology, you know, wearables from like a glasses and a wrist perspective. This is something that you put behind your ear.

26:19Jason Howell: Yeah. So, it's about the time I'll give you, I don't know, what U.S. coin quarter dimes.

26:25Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, maybe a dime.

26:27Jason Howell: I can hold it up if you're watching the video version. I mean, the thing is tiny. Yeah, that's the thing. It looks a little bit like a button. And where you wear it, it looks like a candy, actually. please do not eat my wearable yes follow yes let's get an entirely different type of it yeah yeah so it's a small wearable that you just wear behind your ear so if you put your finger up behind your ear and feel your skull there's a little bony bit there on your skull and that's called the mastoid process so that's the point where this wearable is worn so it just sticks on there with a double sided adhesive and that just sticks on takes about five seconds to stick on and then you take your hand away and then you go and you play your match so it could be a practice session, could be a tournament, whatever that may be.

27:07Jason Howell: And that just sits there and it's actively monitoring the entire time and recording every head impact you receive. And so it's transmitting.

27:13Eóin Tuohy: So inside of this tiny little thing, which I have to say is incredibly light, like I can imagine if I'm wearing this, I would literally have no idea I'm wearing it two seconds later. Like it would just kind of fade in the background. And that's probably good, depending on the sport that you're playing. You don't want to be focused on this little nub that's hidden behind your ear, I suppose. But inside of here, talk about the technology that's driving this, I imagine there's some like gyroscope action, a transmitter, what's going on?

27:39Jason Howell: Yeah, so fundamentally, you got all your core kind of components. So we've got electronics inside, obviously, we have a battery to be to be running the device. We got our microcontroller processing everything. And obviously, our antenna transmitting real time. But the real heavy lifting are two kind of components. So one is an accelerometer, and the other is a gyroscope. So every head impact has two components to it, a linear acceleration, which is a straight line in your three axis. So that's your accelerometer, which is according G-force. And then the other thing is the gyroscope. That's the rotational component.

28:09Jason Howell: So the unit this is radians per second squared. So it's the rotational acceleration. So when you get a hit, you'll likely be moving forward a little bit and there's a bit of a twist. So they're the two components and that's essentially the core element that we're capturing, processing, and then transmitting.

28:23Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, because when you're talking about head injuries, it isn't always just impact. There is that rotational element that can really do a number on. I mean, is that more about neck versus head, brain, that sort of stuff?

28:36Jason Howell: Yeah, there's a lot of factors in it. And obviously, like the human body, it's quite gray. So just as you say, not all head impacts are from direct contact to the head. So obviously, head on head, that's clear. Or head to elbow, or even head with the ground, they're quite common. But a lot of head impacts come from there's no direct contact to the head. So a hit to the body, and there's the whiplash effect. So this is where your neck can compensate and absorb some of that impact. But unfortunately, the brain is still moving about. So this is where all the head impacts are coming. So this is where you want to capture both components, you know.

29:05Eóin Tuohy: Yeah, you know, I'm not personally as like a, I guess, probably a pretty standard American. I'm very unfamiliar with rugby. But you played a clip, no helmets involved, yet head impacts happening. I mean, in the one clip you showed, that looked like a pretty nasty head impact. When I think of American football, I think of wearing a helmet, right? And oh, the helmet's just going to protect you. But you said, actually, that the helmet, I don't know, is a false sense of security or something.

29:35Jason Howell: And yeah, that's really fascinating. So exactly that. It's really counterintuitive. So the principle of when it's happening a concussion, it's the brain, right? So it's the movement of the brain and the sharing of the fibers in there. So that's head impacts is resulting in that. But if you're wearing a helmet, what a helmet is doing, it's protecting your skull. So the actual bone, and it's protecting you from getting a fracture or a serious bang to the skull, the bone element. But it's actually doing nothing for your brain. So the analogy is if you have a tin of olives and I take it up and I shake it and I throw it out to place, the tin looks absolutely fine, which is your skull, but the olives inside are now smushed up.

30:12Jason Howell: So that's the analogy. So players, if you take comparable sports with helmets and without sports, You can see the incidence of concussions much higher in those with helmets because the players feel secure. And you know yourself from wearing go-karting or on a motorbike. You feel secure in a helmet, but you're not from concussion. Actually, it's doing very little. It doesn't do nothing, but it's very, very little to prevent concussion. So this really counterintuitive, you know, but it is quite an interesting factor. Yeah.

30:38Eóin Tuohy: Now, obviously, I am out here because Enterprise Ireland brought me out, yes. But it's really meant to kind of show what kind of innovation in the tech space and the medical tech space and all that are happening in Ireland. Talk a little bit about kind of your relationship to that, being here, developing this company and developing this technology inside of Ireland.

31:01Jason Howell: How does that – I don't know. Where do you stand on that? Yeah, I think Ireland, I think it's fair to say, is punch in the both its way when it comes to the tech sector in all aspects. all aspects so obviously uh to the fore we've all the big tech companies the googles and all are here so there's a really strong skill set here for for digital tech but even we've a very strong like medtech presence here so like whether that's medtech itself hardware or software there's a great skill set here and the ecosystem is just built so to give enterprise ireland uh like so much credit they they're just unbelievable at fostering and helping you with those early stages because you're just this little flame not even a flame a spark and they're they're just getting you help get over those initial hurdles and all that support.

31:40Jason Howell: So it's a really great ecosystem. There's a great startup vibe here in more mature scale-up companies, but everyone's very keen to help each other, share the learning, share the technologies. And it's just, I think it's kind of a cheat code to start a business in. Right on, excellent. Well, Owen, Thuy, thank you so much for talking with me

31:59Eóin Tuohy: and to all of our listeners about this technology. I think it's a really important technology, a really important approach for something that I think a lot of people have a lot of concerns about. It sounds like sports impact technologies is really about addressing health in the realm of head impacts and sports so that we can hopefully continue to put the people we care about into a sport that they enjoy playing, but do it safely.

32:25Jason Howell: Yeah, and that's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to fearmonger anything. We're trying to enable participation, enable sports. We're an early company. We're seeking investment as we go. but already the results we've gotten have been substantial and we see the benefits and we just love sports. So if we can help in any way, that's what we're trying to do. Right on. It's a wonderful, wonderful objective and mission.

32:44Eóin Tuohy: Thank you, Owen, for tossing. Thanks for being in. Owen was awesome. He was so nice. It was really nice talking with him.

32:50Tom Merritt: Yeah, and his metaphor of the olives will still stick with me for a long time.

32:55Eóin Tuohy: That'll jostle around in your head forever now, won't it? Yeah, it was really cool because while I was there, I had the opportunity to attend a rugby game. I got to attend a hurling game. Oh, hurling was so cool. And then obviously the big NFL game. And having done this interview pretty much day two after I got there and then seeing the things that followed, I was able to watch it through a very different perspective. And I mean, Irish field sports, they aren't wearing helmets. And yet, it's so aggressive. Everything's moving so fast. There's so much potential for head injury. So So technologies like this are really important.

33:32Eóin Tuohy: You don't want to just say, no, no one can ever play hurling anymore. You want to find a way to do it safely and for people to really have the information that they need to do it safely.

33:42Tom Merritt: Well, if you have questions about this or thoughts on hurling or rugby or anything else, you can join in the conversation in our Discord. Link it up to your Patreon account. You can become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS.

34:00Eóin Tuohy: We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. And today's delicious wisdom comes from Ava, who's helping us understand spice bags.

34:08Tom Merritt: Yes, I mentioned on one of the live streams that you had had a spice bag in Ireland. And Ava writes, a spice bag is a fundamental part of Irish food that consists of chunky chips, fries, as you would call them, that are deep fried with some shredded onions, peppers, that kind of thing. then mixed with chili, salt, shredded chicken, and doused in a spice mix instead of just plain salt and usually served with a curry sauce on the side. It's perfect drunk food and absolutely delicious when done well. If you're ever in County Kildare, check out the local Chinese takeaway in Prosperous. They have a fabulous spice bag.

34:46Tom Merritt: Drive a bit more down the road and you can come visit me, says Evo.

34:49Eóin Tuohy: It was so good. It was so good. It was the perfect kind of companion to the Guinness that I was drinking at the time. We went to a really wonderful place called Kehoe's in Dublin, and next to there was a place to get Spice Bag. And everybody was like, if you're here, you've got to go there. And, oh, it was perfection.

35:10Tom Merritt: Well, send your favorite Spice Bag joint recommendations to us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com.

35:16Eóin Tuohy: Big thanks to Ava for contributing to today's show. Thanks to Owen for talking to me in Dublin. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Get yourself a spice bag. We'll see you next time.

35:38Eóin Tuohy: The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand.

35:43Tom Merritt: Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.