Apple Comes for the Amazon Echo - DTNS 5364

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2:43the project at every step. For example, ChatGPT work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs. You stay in control reviewing the draft and deciding what moves forward. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans.

3:15Huyen Tue Dao: This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 30th, 2026. We tell you what you need to go, give you important context, and help each other understand. Well, today, Apple's long-delayed move into the smart home starts soon, thanks to Apple's long-delayed release of the improved theory. One delay leads to another. I think I said we tell you what you need to go. You did say that, actually. Absolutely on purpose, because you need to go find out about Apple's long-delayed move into Smart Home. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Wynne Dwight now. Let's start with what you need to go in the big story.

3:51Huyen Tue Dao: Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple will announce its new Smart Home Hub. If you've seen the reporting around this, this is the one codenamed J490, although there's apparently a J491. That will happen Tuesday, October 13th. That's like three days before the iPhone Duo goes up for pre-order. German sources tell him it will be a six inch square display. So about iPhone size and also about as thick as an iPhone with a quarter inch black bezel around it. So that's how you'll know it's not an iPhone. It will have to be plugged in. This won't be a battery powered device. You'll use USB-C for that and you'll have options.

4:28Huyen Tue Dao: You can get it and mount it on a wall. It'll come with a square shaped base that'll house the speakers and microphones in that case and you'll put that below the actual display, or you can get one that goes on your countertop and that one has a round metal base that Gurman says kind of looks like an iMac G4. That will make it able to be put on like your kitchen countertop or something like that. Both versions will be able to recognize family members by voice and face. And then as you approach it, give you personalized answers and content. Like it can show you your calendar, your email, and it will have a visitor mode.

5:06Huyen Tue Dao: So if you've got people over and you don't want them to see your email, you can go into visitor mode. Of course, it will be able to control smart home devices. It will come with apps like calendar, messages, photos, FaceTime notes, reminders, music, and podcasts. German says Apple is also going to announce an update to the HomePod mini. That'll be the first update since 2020. We're talking faster processors, of course, maybe some new color options and a new Apple TV. We haven't had a new Apple TV in four years. Last one was in 2022. Apple also apparently developing a home security camera. That will not be coming out this time.

5:40Huyen Tue Dao: That'll be coming out later. And we're still hearing about a version of the Home Hub that has a nine inch display at the end of a robotic arm. We're not getting that one yet either, but we are getting what essentially is a replacement for the Amazon Echo. It sounds super compelling. I definitely am a smart home hub person, but as an Android user, I've been struggling with the Google Home ecosystem for very many, many years and what a system we're going to use. And I guess now it's Gemini. So anyway, I definitely feel like I'm very tempted by this, especially the idea that if it looks like a G4, I guess because I think that I just like that aesthetic very much.

6:19Huyen Tue Dao: With a little tiny screen. So I find this really compelling. But again, I've only ever been in the Google Home ecosystem. Is this very appealing to you, especially as someone who does have iPhone users in the house? Yeah, we have iPhones and Macs and iPads. But we are an Amazon Echo-based smart assistant layout. Although we do have some Google Homes around. We have no HomePods or anything like that. We have an Apple TV, but you can't talk to that yet. And we use a mix of smart home devices. We've got Philips, we've got Samsung, we've got all that sort of thing. Matter has made that part not be as big of a deal, right?

7:01Huyen Tue Dao: So that's nice. I like the Echoes. I've had them since Gen 1. I think the oldest one finally gave out a year and a half ago, but all the rest of them still work. And in fact, my Echo show that's been in the kitchen for several years, just last week, upgraded to the new voice assistant. Without me, I thought it wasn't going to get it. And suddenly it starts talking to me in that more natural voice. I'm like, oh, I guess you are going to get it. So I look at this and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. This could replace the Amazon Echo. But do I want it to? Because the Echo is very open to, I can add Apple Music to it.

7:41Huyen Tue Dao: I can add podcast app to it. And I want to know more about that openness. I know there are built in apps here. What other apps will I be able to use on it? I think that's the thing too. So right now we kind of slowly let all of the Google homes that we had kind of slowly decay. And we've basically just shoved them off in a corner of the room, except for like one little tiny, I don't know what it's called anymore, but they're little puck size Google homes that I yell at whenever I know what time it is while I'm taking a shower. And I think that unfortunately, from a Google side of it, we've kind of gotten used to that weird decay that we've had in this like weird liminal space we've had between like Assistant and Gemini.

8:16So what we actually have now is a Skylight, which is basically just a calendar. And it actually is more family focused with things like tasks and chores. And it seems to be focused on like things like, hey, like giving out stars or points to the kids when they do chores, kind of more like an interesting like central family planner, but it is not connected really. It just has like this little app that it So I feel like we've gotten back to that kind of more very, it's not analog by any means, but it feels more analog compared to something like an Echo. But I do, I am so attracted to this, but I think that's the thing, though, because I'm not going to switch to the iOS ecosystem for this.

8:54That's like the thing, and I think that's what would get me, is like I do miss having some of those integrations with, you know, more of the apps on my phone. and I miss having YouTube and podcasts and things like that that I can listen to while I'm cooking and be able to command through voice. I do miss that terribly. But again, will I be able to get that if I actually got the J490? Or am I just stuck with my face pressed up against the glass wishing for this or maybe considering an echo or something? I don't know.

9:23Huyen Tue Dao: I suspect that a lot of people are out there saying like, well, it's Apple. Of course, you're going to get locked in. But I have found that Apple TV over the years became equivalent to the Roku in cross compatibility. Pretty much everything is available on it. And certainly almost everything is available on the iPad too. So I don't see why this wouldn't have that cross compatibility. In fact, it's got the iPad layout according to German. So I'm guessing you can just port your iPad apps over to it really simply. In which case, if it has most of the things I can put on an iPad on it, it might actually be better than the Amazon Echo where I am very limited in the kinds of apps I can add.

10:04Huyen Tue Dao: There are open services to it, right? But when you mentioned YouTube, that's what got me thinking along those lines of like, oh, well, there's a YouTube app for everything on Apple. Why wouldn't there be here? And suddenly now I'm ahead of the game if I get this instead of that, except for it being six inch screen, smaller screen. That is a pretty small screen. I don't know. i'm making i'm making gestures about what a six inch screen would look like but uh it looks like my six inch iphone basically is that would you want to like yeah how i kind of imagine because i've heard a lot especially again parents and like folks with like families that want to kind of organize the family i kind of i feel like a lot of people have asked for in different conversations like this for a kind of family what am i trying to say family home base or a family like central control.

10:53What was it called on BSG? Whatever, whatever it was called on BSG, but like a central command center, a command center. There you go. Command center. Like a command center. Is a six inch screen going to do it? I don't know. Six inch square.

11:03Huyen Tue Dao: So it's not the same as an iPhone, right? It's not rectangular. So it's okay. So it's like that. So it's not bad. I just. It's not really great for video though. Now that I'm thinking about that sort of thing. Like they say like, oh, you could put it in the kitchen for recipes. And I'm like, yeah. But you know what I want in the kitchen is audio and video sometimes while I'm cooking. I don't need the recipes up. Also, my eyes are bad. I guess I can imagine myself leaning over the counter to it and just trying to squint at the recipe. But I think it is compelling. I'm still waiting to hear about the nine-inch display with the robotic arm because that was the one they were saying would be more kind of like an AI, you know, almost like a buddy.

11:42Huyen Tue Dao: where it would swivel around and react to you and all of that kind of thing. Yeah, I could see the Home Hub maybe replacing my Amazon Echo Show 5-inch, which we have in the bathroom because it has a physical shutter to block the camera. And that way we get a little bit of video in there as well. And we mostly use it for audio, for playing music and stuff. If this has a way to make sure to block that camera, it would replace that because it'd be a bigger screen. I'd be interested. I'll keep my ears open. If it is open enough that even me, the Android user, the green bubble, could enjoy and use it effectively, I'm still searching for my smart hub.

12:20But it'll only be one. I only have room left in my heart for my one true smart hub. Don't settle, Gwen. Wait for the right one. I guess you don't have to settle with us. We really value you, the listener, and we work very hard to bring this show, which is made possible by y 'all. So we want to take a little time to thank Chris Beneteau, Jeffrey Zilks, Adam L, Alo, and John Mogensen. Yay! I used to be the person who hunched over my laptop mid-meeting, typing furiously to catch every word, and missing half the conversation because I was too busy transcribing it. That's the problem Granola fixed for me.

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16:58Huyen Tue Dao: There's more we're talking about today, so let's get to the briefs. All right. Well, Amazon has announced a new Fire TV Stick 4K alongside an updated remote user interface and an app. Amazon says the new Fire Stick turns on faster and launches apps faster. So in what sounds very much like those old cola commercials where they would almost blind taste test and surprise someone was like, this is actually this cola. Amazon said it compared the new stick to three leading smart TV brands and found that the Fire TV Stick 4K played content faster than all three of the TVs we tested. Wow. All three. I love how their video about this doesn't show us the other two TVs.

17:42It just has app up on the screen. That's how you know. That is really good. It is. It does seem to be faster, just like just like that gentleman really did seem to prefer that brand of cola. It gets its power, by the way, from the TV's USB port and supports HDR, but not Dolby Vision. It runs Amazon's new Vega OS and lists at$60. So there are plenty of sales with especially, you know, things like Thanksgiving coming up. the new remote has a curved weighted bottom and flat straight top so you can tell which end is which which is very important it's guilty uh i'm not holding it upside down the home button has a metal surface to make it easier to identify by touch and the other buttons like power and mic have different shapes and it has a programmable button this one ships with the new fire tv stick 4k and sells on its own for 15 a new plus version with aluminum housing and backlit buttons is coming early next year.

18:42Now, the Fire TV interface adds a hub for the voice assistant and promises better answers to questions. Drawing from what it knows about you in the hub, you can ask follow-ups and scroll back to previous interactions. The voice assistant also comes to the Fire TV app. You can share an article you're reading on the web with the app, and the assistant will make a list of TV shows and movies based on it. You can also search for shows by uploading a picture of that reminds you of that show or movie, like a poster or a screenshot or a wood chipper.

19:14Huyen Tue Dao: Is that your friend there in it? Yeah. So I don't know about the voice assistant hub that we're being cagey about saying the name so we don't set off everybody's voice assistant. But that's fine. I'm sure some people will find a good use for it. Those things so far have not proved to be like very game changing for any of this stuff. Um, but, but maybe, you know, it is getting more capable. I've noticed that with my Amazon echoes from what we were talking about before, uh, the new remotes, great design. Yeah. They're starting to hone in on that. Uh, and I like that they're simplifying the fire TV stick lineup.

19:54Huyen Tue Dao: Uh, so they, they basically have an HD, a 4k and a 4k max, which was already out. That's just a faster processor with some bells and whistles. But yeah, these are becoming commodities is what this tells me. And you should just buy the cheapest TV you can, leave the internet off if you want, and plug a stick in it. And that way you're able to upgrade your TV's operating system faster than you would with the smart TV itself. I will say that despite the dubiousness of the visuals of the commercial, I do appreciate the fact that they're emphasizing this kind of speed because as we know, a lot of these, you know, like TVs themselves and also TV peripherals do have an issue with launching and just the speed because they are wonderfully, you know, commoditized small devices.

20:45They are resource strapped. So I do appreciate them putting that out there, even though they did it in a very hilarious way.

20:53Huyen Tue Dao: sort of believe them anyway. I do believe is what it ends up being because the sticks have a reputation for being slower than the boxes. And I think what Amazon's trying to say is that's not true anymore. Let us show you. We'll compare it to a smart TV, a whole TV itself. And I'm like, I believe you. I see the processor spec you put in there. I'm sure it's faster. You've optimized Vega to be faster. Your video is like a cartoon drawing of the fact that it's faster. to me, but okay. It's like, say less, say less. Yes, exactly. I honestly think though that, and I've always been sort of vaguely skeptical of some of these more conversational features for TV specifically.

21:40Though I have to admit, it is interesting sometimes, and we've definitely have one or two occasions where my husband and I are talking about a thing that we both sort of remember. And I kind of can imagine that it would help to have something a little bit smarter. helping us find the thing that we're looking for. But I feel like that's like a once a quarter. Exactly. Right.

21:59Huyen Tue Dao: Like the image thing sounds incredibly useful once in a while, right? Where you're like that one time you're like, I know exactly what it is. It's the guy and he's holding the ax and it's raining. And like, yeah, you could put that photo up. I don't know where you'd get a photo of a guy in the rain with an ax easily, but you know, probably just have Gemini create it. I up or a poster up and like, what is this movie? And the, and that would be able to help you once a year, you know, maybe once a quarter, like you said it's not the feature that you're going to rely on all the time. And I think a lot of those proactive things for me are for a different kind of user.

22:39Huyen Tue Dao: And I'm not sure how many there are. There may be more than I think, but how a lot of these features are like, you sit down and you don't know what to watch. And I'm like, when I sit down to watch TV, I know what I'm choosing from. It's always like, I need to catch up on one of these three shows. Rarely am I sitting down at the TV and saying, I don't know what to watch right now. Tell me, voice assistant. But I know there are people who need that. So I guess that one's compelling for other kinds of users. There was something that we talked about last week, and I don't remember. It might've been all the YouTube features, but someone had mentioned that Zillennials and young folks tend to, the way that they communicate with technology is often through uploading a video or even a picture.

23:20And I can definitely see that. And I wonder if there's just this current, you know, in all of the OEMs manufacturers and all these kind of experienced like manufacturers that, oh, we want to kind of address like how people might be using these things. But again, that's like a lot of work for me sitting down to a TV. When I sit down on the couch, that's like minimal work time. I don't want to I don't want a lot of that effort. And sometimes even just typing on which is not great on the remote is is actually less work for me uh zillenial zillen wait hold on my zillenials what are the new people called gen z gen gen alf al

23:56Huyen Tue Dao: gen z and alpha is the ones in like elementary school and oh not them they shouldn't be on the tv that much like in college okay i get confused because we say zillennial but it's an x not a z it's a not a z not a zed it's a i think zillennials are the people on the border between gen z and millennial. I'm sort of there. I'm 83. My husband's 82. So we're kind of crossing. Oh, that's excellent. Xennial. You're on the border between Gen X and millennial. Okay. I'll say Xennial now, just to clarify. I thought we pronounced X's like that. But yeah, I just kind of wonder if this actually is just more just like trying to appeal to the young people in a very hello fellow kids kind of way, or whether we're trying to actually, and to give credit to like manufacturers, is this actually something that people are going to want to do to communicate with their devices.

24:42I don't know.

24:42Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. No, you're right. You pronounce the X like a Z, but it gets confusing when you got Gen Z. Sorry. Yeah. Anyway. Just kids these days. Yeah. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating the safety practices of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Bloomberg sources say the agency is about to ask formally for information to assess if the companies are following consumer protection laws. The FTC has previously sought information from Google, OpenAI, and Meta about the impact of chatbots on children. So Federal Trade Commission in the United States saying, are these models safe? Have you violated any safety rules for consumer protection in your rollout of these models?

25:23Huyen Tue Dao: I think that is a proper area for that agency to investigate. And maybe not the final word on AI safety by any sense, but a good way to approach looking at one aspect of it. The story of actual government action will get less attention than the meeting of tech executives and the president of the United States, where they signed a memo called Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities, which promises, among other safety practices, to use outside auditors to assess model safety. The memo was signed by executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet's Google, Meta, SpaceX's XAI, and NVIDIA. The president also signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to use the term super intelligence or SI, which is going to make me think of Sports Illustrated.

26:13Huyen Tue Dao: But no one else has to do that. That's a little confusing because super intelligence usually means advanced things we are trying to achieve, not products we already have. That memo that was signed by the executives probably has a little more weight than people are giving it credit for because a lot of times, you know, when you write down something, when you make a public commitment, it kind of makes you want to follow it and naturally as a human being and people will be pointing to it. But it certainly isn't a law. It certainly isn't an actual, you know, act of Congress or anything like that. So, yeah, the FTC investigating the safety practices, to me, is the bigger story out of all of this stuff.

26:52Yeah, I mean, whatever we call things is kind of here or there, especially with technology. But yeah, I do appreciate that. And as you said, it's nice. If anything, it's very reassuring that we're finding a focused, specific thing that we want to evaluate rather than, you know, a lot of these things, like, I know we're all kind of, there's a lot going on right now about AI safety, what's going to happen to the human race, yada, yada. It's always going to be big, like slightly hand wavy or very hand wavy discussions, but focused and specific is really what we, in my opinion, need to get, you know, actual good work done in terms of like regulation and or true safety.

27:28So agreed. Very good.

27:30Huyen Tue Dao: And I really like it when we see a problem and don't immediately go, we need to invent something new, but go like, let's look at what processes we already have and apply as many of those as possible before we turn to needing to invent something new. And the FTC is doing that in this case. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I don't know how to agree with you more. And if anything, that feels very engineering-y. We kind of assess what resources we have now. And usually the biggest ROI is to leverage those, whether that's like a physical product or a process. So I agree with you. It just feels like the right way to do it.

28:05And then if we need it, we need something new, then we invent it. But yes. Well, yeah.

28:10Huyen Tue Dao: So there you go, folks. We've solved it. There we go. You're welcome. You're welcome in the world. Well, we want to say thank you to Motang for noting this on our subreddit. Reuters has a report on McDonald's using some kind of LLM to help fine-tune local pricing. So McDonald's franchises have always set their own final prices and vary, of course, by market and often even within the same market. The story here is that the corporate headquarters is providing a tool that supposedly optimizes those pricing changes based on the available data. Some franchisees are reporting feeling pressured to use the tool's suggested prices.

28:50Huyen Tue Dao: which also wouldn't be a new thing for McDonald's corporate to be pressuring a franchisee to do something the corporate wanted, uh, instead of maybe what the franchise you wanted this, oh man, this story is just, it's a recipe for clickbait. Uh, uh, take a thing people hate, uh, not having the same price everywhere, even though it happens all the time, just the idea of it rubs, rubs us the wrong way. Add McDonald's huge SEO hit. Everybody knows McDonald's, right? And everybody's got an opinion about McDonald's ad small business person getting taken advantage by big company, which also McDonald's has been doing forever.

29:29Huyen Tue Dao: This is not the first time or the new thing. And then sprinkle AI hate over the top of it. No one could resist the story. There's not much here. This is McDonald's is using an LLM to fine tune a practice that already happens and being pushy about it. And to me, it's like that's a business story at best. And it's not even that new of a story when you take into account McDonald's. At least that's my take on it. It's just them trying to find a new tool to augment their current practices. Although I do think it's really funny because again, LLMs are, for me, notoriously non-deterministic. So imagine non-deterministic price fluctuations could actually make it better for the franchisees every now and again.

30:11Hallucinate.

30:12Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. I mean, honestly, what corporate wants is to make as much money as possible, which the franchisees want to. So it's not like corporate's going to make the franchisees lose money with this. I also think that we forget, and it's because if the corporation says this, it sounds like they're just being self-serving, but price variations also lower prices in places where people can't afford to pay as much. And so that is a good thing to have price variances in that case. It can be exploitative and using an LLM could make it even more exploitative. And of course, There's the story about that one place in Connecticut where McDonald's tool told them to charge$18 for a burger and they wouldn't do it.

30:54Huyen Tue Dao: And, you know, there's always those exceptions to prove the rule. But generally speaking, I don't find much to be mad at here. Incremental to previous mad. You should be like maybe we should be just about the same level of mad. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Well, folks, if you'd like to be mad at smart TVs for spying on you, I've got a new video that I did with Brian Brushwood over at the Modern Rogue channel. It's a DTNS Modern Rogue Collapse. You can watch it on Modern Rogue or you can watch it on Daily Tech News Show. It goes deeper into that LG smart TV news that we talked about last week and gives you some opportunities.

31:36Huyen Tue Dao: Maybe you should just abandon your privacy and get a free TV, or maybe you could try to hit a home run against big TV. And we'll tell you how to do that as well. You can watch the episode on the Daily Tech News Show YouTube channel or the Modern Rogue YouTube channel at youtube.com slash modern rogue.

31:58Huyen Tue Dao: With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase and you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Stephen, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus. Terms apply. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text.

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33:44Huyen Tue Dao: Let's take a look at some quick headlines that when they pass through your ears and your brain will leave you smarter. Well, Cloudflare said Tuesday that it is working towards issuing quantum-proof TLS certificates in Q1 of 2027. the Merkle tree certificates should be uncrackable by quantum computers. Once quantum computers, quantum computers become capable. Yeah. So all this talk that we're having about, like, should we put more safety guidelines before we create super intelligence reminds me of what we're doing quietly with quantum computers, which is like, you know, quantum computers keep getting better.

34:21Huyen Tue Dao: And they're still a few years out, but let's actually improve all of our security now before they actually become a real thing. Yes, love this. Instagram is adding a chatbot assistant to its edits app that doesn't help you edit. It provides feedback based on what it knows about your channel or, I guess, your account. The promise is that knowing your performance metrics, it'll give you advice on what kind of videos will result in a higher performing post. But again, it doesn't actually do the edits. Kind of feels like advice post facto if you're in the middle of a video and it's when you're about to like, which video should I make?

34:59Huyen Tue Dao: next. Well, your audience loves it when you do this, this kind of thing. Okay. All right. Well, DoorDash opened a wait list for customers who want to be able to order food through an agent that they can access from Apple's messaging app. DoorDash is also beginning to test drone deliveries in Northern California. I kind of love the ability to just do a text message and say, send me the burger from my favorite burger place. Windows 1126H2 has arrived with a warning that the update includes some known issues. There's some USB audio issues. There's some domain joining issues. These are issues that already existed before this update.

35:37Huyen Tue Dao: What Microsoft is warning you is that if you didn't have these issues and you do this update, it could cause them to show up. So Microsoft has mitigations. If they do show up, they say they're working on fixes, but I kind of go with what PC World said, which was like, I don't know if you're worried about this, maybe don't do the update until they fix it. All right, we got a new Samsung, smart tag coming in with the smart tag three which adds longer range longer battery life and the ability to record how your pet moves and how long they sleep the new galaxy smart tag three arrives in early november for thirty dollars or a pack of four for one hundred dollars and i can't help but wonder whether we need to ask our pets consent before we watch them move and ask and check how long they sleep but maybe that's just me and how do you get that consent i don't know you can tell me because all i have to do is give seven the dog a treat and he'll be like yeah whatever you want i don't care track track me forever it's fine i do think it's clever to you know put tracking into the smart tag like that no i i'm joking but yeah i i've i imagine that this could be you know a a lifesaver as you know especially for some pets that that like to wonder.

36:46Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, the quantified pet. Anthropic says that Jipu's GLM 5.3 model can be used to generate malicious content and that its safeguards can be bypassed to be used to fully automate exploits. I could not find out what Anthropic wants us to do about it, but it is warning that. All right. Well, Apple Pay is available in India now on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch with Mac support coming soon. Customers with eligible Access Bank issued Visa and MasterCards can add them to Apple Wall and use them anywhere that takes NFC payments. Yeah, indeed. That's a good one. Shout out to Allison Sheridan, who pointed this out to me over text message.

37:25Huyen Tue Dao: iFixit has their AirPods 5 repairability article out with the title, AirPods 5 are the least unrepairable AirPods yet. as backhanded as a backhanded compliment can get. The AirPods 5 score a two out of 10 on repairability, which you might think sounds awful until you know that previous AirPods got a zero out of 10. So the batteries now have prongs instead of being soldered in, which means it might be possible to replace them without destroying them. So you get a two out of 10 for that. Yay, progress. Well, the information sources say that Google is paying about 100 publishers for access by Gemini and the revenue is about one tenth of one percent.

38:14We did the math before the show. That's point zero zero one of the participating publishers advertising revenue.

38:21Huyen Tue Dao: So they're not paying them much, is what that says. And that's the kind of thing that if they don't get on the stick on that. Google pays them for their contribution to the generation of answers, which is why they say, but then that's a black box. You don't really know how that happens. Thanks to R.W. Nash for noting this one on our subreddit. Microsoft is bringing Linux container support to the Windows subsystem for Linux, or WSL, and says they're working on Docker Compose-style support as well. Cool. And Signal's end-to-end encrypted backups are now available on all platforms. The feature came to Android a year ago and is now on iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows.

39:01Huyen Tue Dao: Oh, yeah. So you can safely port your chats between platforms. That's great. All right. Well, we end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Andrew has a thought on the difference between a proactive agent in the workplace versus your personal life. Yeah. Yesterday we were talking about, uh, opening eyes dots, uh, that can work in the cloud proactively for you and come up with stuff for you and then tell you about it when, when you're around. Uh, and that's very similar to what Muse wants to do. Andrew writes, one of the biggest hurdles to a proactive AI agent is going to be getting it as much context as possible for your daily life without it being a burden on you as a user.

39:41Huyen Tue Dao: Professionally, my job as a software architect has morphed into building and updating context so the team's AI helpers are as effective as possible. I spend a lot of that time correcting the bot or adding context that didn't get recorded. It's worth it when I can say, go build, and it does a good job. In my personal life, though, I don't know how much I'm interested in constantly updating my own context online to help my bot. As an example, I recently met an old friend for lunch, and he messaged looking for me at the agreed spot. I stood up and found him in response. The next morning, the personal AI daily briefing I was testing admonished me to reschedule and apologize because the context disappeared for it after that last text.

40:24Huyen Tue Dao: I had to explain the actual outcome. It frustrated me because it very quickly felt like work that was forced on me, and I could see that being a more common occurrence in a proactive agent world. yes uh no i i do think that's really interesting and and and and andrew i i always love uh andrew i always appreciate when you write in being another software person out in colorado i i definitely if i could add to that like i feel like again also myself as a software engineer this is i can say kind of where we're moving to and at least it is the reality of our jobs that a lot of times now we are trying to more guide agents and bots into more of like the actual paths that we want them to go down.

41:09And I'll be real with you, it is not my favorite thing in the world. It does feel a little bit like herding cats at this point. And it's a little bit more mental load than I like, but there is a worth it there. And I think also the ROI on it is quite large, as you have said, like, especially at the scale at which we're constructing things. Yeah, it makes sense for me to put some time into correcting it because really once I get into a place where the bot has all the appropriate context and has all the appropriate skills or whatever it has, it does tend to fly. And that's my job. That's what I do for a living.

41:41I need to do that. I totally agree with you. And I think what bothers me also is that part of the promise of this generative AI generation reality is that you should be able to just do stuff. You know what of times context is missing or just something seems to go somewhere. Actually, it was so funny yesterday on Android Faithful. Our dear friend Ron Richards went into a rant basically about this, where the I think he was talking about Gemini in this perspective, it was losing context or claimed it could receive context more or less with it actually not having some place to store it. So I think that that edge, where again, for us in our jobs, that's just part of our daily life.

42:21And we do see a large ROI at the end of it, that doesn't happen for regular people or not regular people for us in our regular life.

42:28Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, yeah. For your non-work life. Yeah. Obviously, the solution is just let it see and record everything about you all the time. If it could have seen you stand up and wave to your friend, then it would have got the context. So we really just need to hand over more of our privacy to it. That'll fix it.

42:53Looking side to side. Tom, hold four fingers up in front of your face, please.

42:58Huyen Tue Dao: Don't give them any ideas. No, I'm obviously exaggerating. I do think these tools will get better at that sort of thing. And in the future, say like, oh, you never responded to this. Did I miss something? And sometimes if you've got wearables, Maybe they would be able to see and all of that sort of thing. But in the end, I'm with you. Like there will be a different calculation about how much of this you want to deal with in your personal life versus your work life. And right now, I think the one thing that's taking shape is these are very much work tools and the prioritization, like every technology is for work and enterprise and productivity.

43:33Huyen Tue Dao: And so pushing them into personal life the way Muse has is very interesting to watch because it's very popular right now. But at what point does it become not popular anymore because people see the edges of what it can actually do, hopefully without putting in too much work to it? Or, yes, other things. But, yeah, what are you all thinking about? Do you have any insight into a story? We would love to hear it. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Thanks to Andrew for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show, listening to us out there. You're the folks who keep us in business.

44:05Huyen Tue Dao: So if you haven't become a patron yet, go try it out for free. patreon.com slash DTNS.

44:16The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand.

44:22Huyen Tue Dao: Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

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