Apple’s New CEO Announces a New Foldable iPhone - DTNS 5349

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2:51Huyen Tue Dao: This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and help each other understand. Today, Apple's got a new CEO and a new foldable, and Sarah Lane is here to make sense of it all. Woo, triple win. I'm John Merritt. I'm Wintwet now. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. john turnis ceo of apple uh made his big debut at an announcement uh made the big foldable announcement you could tell he's a hardware guy because we can get any of those numbers tim cook likes to say it was all about like hardware and and processors and stuff right from the start and of course joining us uh to talk about it is sarah lane uh sarah what what was your takeaway overall on the announcement?

3:39Well, you know, I was, hi, everyone. I was wondering how John Ternus' big debut was going to be. We got a little Tim Cook off the top. Oh, yeah.

3:52Huyen Tue Dao: We got the handover. That's right. For anybody who watched the whole thing as we did, which I thought was nice. And then it was kind of like just me being like, all right, man, can you do this? What do you got? Because I don't know him. You know, he's been behind the scenes for so long. So it was a very interesting event for a variety of reasons. We got a lot of updates and unveils. But for the most part, i thought he did good yeah yeah uh slightly different style but not that different frankly you know just different presentation style because he's a different guy right i mean the whole the whole apple announcement thing has become very you know like we do it beforehand you know like no one's gonna f up yeah yeah you know like that we've been doing that for a while so i mean the the sort of polished nature of it doesn't, um, I don't know.

4:57It doesn't really rattle me, but, but it definitely was, I mean, there were a lot of green screens going on.

5:02Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. Yeah. Count the green screens. It'd be a fun game. Uh, if you want to rewatch it. Uh, well, let's start with the big one. Uh, the final announcement at the very end, I believe he may have even said one more thing, although he didn't make a big deal out of it. He said another thing, another thing. That's what it was. Yeah. So maybe that's the new John Ternus version of one more thing. It was the foldable phone, iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable, has a 5.4 inch outer display, 7.6 inner display, has the new A20 Pro, which is also in the iPhone 18 Pro, has its own display engine, uses Touch ID.

5:36Huyen Tue Dao: They went into all the details on the hinge and the screen and how all that works. Are you sad that we have to wait until October 16th to pre-order it for$2 ,000. That's the starting price, 256 gigabytes, up to two terabytes. And of course, shipping October 25th. Up to two terabytes, by the way. In a phone. Yeah. Yeah. It's like 256. I mean, I could survive with that. You can squeeze by on that. But two terabytes? I mean, who doesn't want that? Yeah, that's a big distinction. What's your top takeaways from the fold? Mine? So, well, we knew this was coming. And Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg had mentioned already that it was going to be called the iPhone Duo, which it is.

6:30So I wouldn't say I was super surprised about anything. But at the same time, just this very, very different form factor for Apple is a big deal. And Apple is clearly catching up to many other companies who have been doing this for years. We know this. And that was sort of like, okay, how are they going to introduce this to people who either just haven't ever had a foldable before or just, you know, think that like the Samsung option is better. And that's where Apple really shines. Apple is like, here's how this is going to change your life. A friend of mine who was watching the announcement at the same time as me was like, wow, so like, I don't need an iPad anymore.

7:27Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. And I was like, huh, that's an interesting question because I don't, I mean, Apple certainly is not trying to reduce that category, but at the same time, it's offering something that can do more or less what a tablet could do and a phone could not. Yeah, I think that's one of the most impressive parts of their demonstration is a 1.4 to 1 aspect ratio on both screens so that your screen looks the same when you're closed or open. uh facetime camera behind the display uh is a nice touch uh so that you don't have to see it you see it when you're doing a facetime call so you know where it is but it goes away uh the rest of the time yeah i thought they did a good job of explaining all of their hardware uh innovations the magnets the carbon fiber support the titanium backplate the polymer for scratch resistance all that sort of stuff.

8:26Which is maybe, which is maybe, um, the, you know, the Termas, uh, era, you know, let's talk about how we did this.

8:33Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. I thought they spent more time talking about that than I would have expected under the Tim Cook era. Uh, and then camera, you know, talking about the fact that this is mostly the same camera that you're going to get in the iPhone 18. Cause I think a lot of people had that question of like, well, I camera's very important to me. Do I want to get the foldable? And what am I going to compromise if I do that? But you get the same ultra wide you get the 2x telephoto it is pretty much the same one yeah you've got that a20 pro chip um and yeah you're off and running when uh do you what are your thoughts on the apple foldable i like the duo sorry no i like it a lot i do think that it being called a duo is hilarious um i really like this device i an android user but i love foldables and so of course we're all waiting to see what Apple did with it.

9:23And I think they honestly took all the lessons that the Android side has been learning, that we've been learning, and all of us users have been complaining about for years, and they basically papered over a lot of those rough edges. I think, to be fair, the squatty aspect is what we've been calling it. I probably could find a better name for that. It's brilliant. I do wonder whether everyone just kind of scooped Apple on that a little bit, knowing that it would be like basically an iPad mini folded in half. But the aspect ratio was great. And the things that people complain about, even it lying flat, because I remember when the OG Pixel Fold came out, people were complaining about it lying flat.

10:02They mentioned it lays flat. It's got a horizontal camera bar, which means like more room for accessories on the bottom with the MagSafe. The screen has that amazing glass, which should hopefully address creasing issues as well as any kind of like scratches because infamously most Android foldables have that very, very soft inner screen. So using something like a stylus is kind of like a, or even getting any kind of like crumb in there is like fraught. So they did that. It's IP68, which again, as good as like say things like the Z Fold 8 have been, the Samsungs are not IP68. The Pixel Fold is, but it's a lot thicker and heavier.

10:41The iPhone Duo is not. It's just about as thin as the Z Folds, I believe. and just as light. So that's pretty amazing. And even little things like there was that really great match cut animation that they do when you open it and close it that just gives that little bit of like, you know, Apple magic on it there that really kind of brings everything together. I think they did an amazing job. I honestly want one of these phones just because I'm an Android user, but I also enjoy technology. I used to be an iOS developer. And I think that we have a lot to like, we, I say we, the Android OEMs will hopefully, you know, as much as we, yeah, collective, we will take inspiration of that.

11:20And I think, again, as you mentioned the camera, the one thing that has been pretty consistent with foldables on the Android side or foldables rather, is that the camera is always a, a is something that, you know, you kind of compromise. I appreciate them, them kind of emphasizing that. And like other things, like even the folding mode, the tent mode and the laptop mode. Very notably, even though Android has introduced features to take advantage of this, the Z Fold 8, again, being probably the most popular Android foldable right now, lacks all of that. So I just see all the... Oh, and the MagSafe.

11:51Just the fact that it has MagSafe, whereas again, Samsung doesn't have MagSafe built in. It's Qi2 ready, but not actual Qi2 compliant. There's all these wonderful things that it's just a great device.

12:04Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, just little touches, right? Little touches. It's a great device. I know we'll wait to see how the actual... When people get in their hands is the form factor great how does the glass actually hold up to creasing i think they did a great job i know it took forever but that's a very apple thing right to really get it right and i i think well you you said it best when it's like uh apple just sat back quietly and was like let's just see what the android people are doing i think the squatty is winning we see samsung and google doing okay we're going with the squatty and then we're yeah and then we're gonna you know introduce our own version and the rest of us, well, you know, some of us will say like, wow, cool.

12:44What a great form factor I'm in. Yeah.

12:47Huyen Tue Dao: The joke being like, oh, it's great that Apple finally invented the foldable phone. You're right. If it pushes innovation forward on the other side of the aisle, I'm for it. And again, I just like the form factor a lot. I love the productivity aspect of it. And again, even the little gesture touches and the way that they're doing multitasking, multi-windowing, very impressed. Yeah. I think the software is one of the things that'll differentiate it. I mean, we talked about the hardware and the crease and the lay flat and all of that. And it looks like that will turn out to be an advantage. But the one thing when I'm looking at my pixel fold and looking at this is like, yeah, this looks more seamless where I'm not going to notice so much that I've gone from the front to the inside.

13:31Huyen Tue Dao: It's going to, like, I can just put it in tent mode. I can put it in laptop mode, and it will automatically do that. And Android does some of that. But it looks like Apple is doing it really well. And if it is as seamless as they want to present, which, you know, they always make it look better in the presentation than it does in real life, then I think it will be cool. I wonder which apps work for this all the time, right? There's going to be those apps like, Like, oh, that one doesn't do it. That one didn't adapt because it's not integrated properly. Well, that's the question, right? Is like, what do you do on your iPhone currently?

14:06And, you know, we all have, you know, the three, four apps that, you know, if we're being honest, like are the only ones that we used, you know, all the time. Do we, does that change with a different form factor? And again, if you have an iPhone and an iPad and a Mac, you know, how does this particular model change the way that you do your work? And I don't have the answer. That's actually my question.

14:39Huyen Tue Dao: When I know you've done development on your foldables before. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. These are all great questions. I will point out that something that, again, I'm in an Android Slack community. a lot of iOS users in there, so we are often comparing and contrasting. In regards to support, I will say that the Slack, that Slack that they showed with that two-pane view, that is not an Android. And this is a thing that happens. And in fact, I guess at my company and other companies, because they know that this was coming out, there have been initiatives to work on adaptable sizing UIs. So not only, and this is something that Apple has been very good at to some extent.

15:20And Google does it too, but they're very good at basically making developers jump when they say jump and having them ask how high. They're very good at that. And that's, again, that's the power. And I think this device actually is a good distillation of why, in particular, this particular model that Apple does with being both the single hardware manufacturer as well as the people making the software and that tight integration and that kind of high quality. it's things like that animation from open to close that you get which i and i i'm not 100 sure but given that android is an ecosystem and it's a it's a more broader system there are things that apple can do that tie together and they can make developers do things like support certain apps and i will say that also generally speaking people are going to be more aware of ios they have been for the last 10 12 years no i'm not sad about that um and they will they will focus on this i'm sure there are a lot of companies that are i i know i know there are a lot of friends android friends and ios friends on teams out there that this has been on their radar and their priority is supporting this and maybe they'll throw some love over at android large screens to begin with but i i wouldn't be surprised it will be a factor because that's one thing that's still an issue on android is that there are a lot of apps a lot of commonly used apps like instagram it comes right off the top of my head that are still absolutely horrible experiences on a larger device because they just kind of shrink into portrait mode and you got tons of space and it's really bad to use i would say that i expect it to be better on ios and in the iphone duo but i don't know how much yeah i don't i this is definitely pushing really hard which hopefully the high tide lifts all of our mobile boats but i don't know how hard that will push i just i'm not familiar so we'll see

17:00Huyen Tue Dao: all right uh let's talk about the iphone 18 pro and the pro max uh these are they pitch them mostly with the Apple intelligence features. They are a similar design to the 17 Pro. New H20 Pro chip in there though. So there was a little talk about that. Also brand new colors, Glacier and Burgundy for the first time. Apple also added a reference image feature so that you can digitally authenticate a photo taken with the camera at the pixel layer. It stays with the image. They're going to support Synth ID too, but they have their own on top of that. Uh, Apple also has, uh, oh, let's talk a little about the A20 Pro, two nanometer A20 Pro, six core CPU.

17:45Huyen Tue Dao: Two of those are desktop class cores, uh, seven core GPU up to 40 % faster and 32 neural engine cores. Cause they've got two, basically 16 neural engines, uh, chips next to each other. Uh, and the camera has variable aperture, uh, which is really interesting. I think it has it in the foldable as well, but, but the, the actual like blades are in there so that it can automatically contract or expand automatically based on the kind of picture you're taking. Sarah, after the glory of the foldable, how does the iPhone 18 Pro strike you? Well, it strikes me as a really great phone. I'm still rocking the 15 Pro Max.

18:25So, you know, I'm a few cycles behind, but at the same time, it's like, it's a great phone. Now, what I do think that Apple does, and I think that every time Apple has an announcement about a camera that's better, they start to speak to advertising agencies. It's kind of like, I mean, what are we all doing with, you know, with the camera? Like, are we filmmakers? If we are, great. You know, we can do that. But I felt like today watching the event was sort of like, we are talking to people who want to use the camera in order to, you know, sell things online. That was just kind of my takeaway. And that's not wrong.

19:16That's, I mean, that you want a good camera to be able to do those things. But I do feel like as a consumer, unless again, you are just really like hyped up about photography and everything that you get out of it, some of that stuff is a little bit lost on me. Yeah.

19:34Huyen Tue Dao: A lot of it is for advertising and influencing, right? Uh, which are two big things. Uh, there was, there was some interesting Apple intelligence stuff like expressing voices for you to customize Siri, uh, 16 languages. Uh, so we're going to get a French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish in October, uh, for Siri AI. Um, a lot of stuff about the custom packaging and the side-by-side memory of, of the A20 pro there. You could tell the hardware guys in charge because they got to spend a lot of time talking about the A20 Pro. But yeah, I think you're right. Most of the big sell here is either Apple intelligence on device, which we kind of knew after WWDC, or the camera.

20:17Yeah. And listen, I mean, I'm never going to be like, I don't care about cameras. I do. But what am I doing with that? If that is part of my livelihood, then it really matters to me. And I think that's who Apple is speaking to.

20:33Huyen Tue Dao: And a lot of people, even if it doesn't matter to them, they, they, they react to they're like, Ooh, I got pro controls. I can set the aperture and shutter speed. I got smart focus tracking. Yeah. Uh, the one that caught my eye was audio. That's only in frame. So that if like, if your film, this happens to be a concert game where it's like, I don't want to hear myself singing. I want them singing in the video I'm doing, uh, stuff like that. I don't know if you, uh, If you had too many takeaways on the iPhone 18 Pro, when, what did you think? It looks nice. Sorry. I'm very much an Android user.

21:04So I mean, I know that there are amazing devices and I was curious to see more about what the Apple intelligence looked like and everything seems impressive. I feel like there's like a bunch of core features that we're all kind of like, you know, kind of as a society of mobile users are kind of focusing on and kind of, what am I trying to say? Like zeroing in on. I did really like the Ramble-like feature And someone in, again, my developer chat mentioned that all of these things, especially like things like Ramble could be really great accessibility features. And I think that is one thing that Apple excels in is that accessibility story they have been for a long time and they continue to be.

21:36So I'd be excited to kind of see again, like more of this actually in the hands of real people and seeing how it does. But yeah, I think it's exciting time.

21:44Huyen Tue Dao: And Ramble, of course, if anybody doesn't know on Android is like you can just kind of say something and then Gemini will make sense of it for you. There was a feature like that for Siri and it's like, well, you got Gemini under the hood. So, you know, not surprising that they took their adapted Gemini model and did a similar thing. iPhone pro 6.3 inch screen starts at$1 ,199, 256 gigabytes, also up to two or two terabytes that you can put in there quite a bit more expensive though, if you do that. And then the iPhone pro max is the 6.9 inch screen. That one starts at a hundred dollars more,$1 ,299.

22:22I also just, before we get off the subject of the pro and the pro max, the pro max hat used to be like, and if you want a bigger screen, let's talk about the Pro Max. The Pro Max was barely mentioned.

22:37Huyen Tue Dao: It was just the bigger screen. That was it. Yeah. It was just like, you want the Pro or the Pro Max? That's it. The Pro Max doesn't have anything that the Pro doesn't have at this point. No, that's a good point. They did talk about their monthly leasing, the new Apple upgrade system. They introduced AppleCare One family to people. You can pre-order the iPhone Pro and Pro Max September 12th, so in three days from when we're recording, and then it'll ship on September 18th. Also, they didn't mention this in the announcement, but we did get the news that iOS 27 with Siri AI coming September 14th for older iPhones, so four days before the shipping of the new iPhone, which is about standard.

23:17Huyen Tue Dao: Let's talk about the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, both with a new S11 chip, bunch of upgraded health tracking, an audio intelligence feature. So it can recap your day by listening and taking notes. It could recap a meeting. It can give you the last 15 seconds of a conversation. They used a weird restaurant demo of that where the waiter was saying a lot of menu specials really fast, which I thought it would be rude if you just looked at them and then started tapping your watch to hear what they just said. But anyway, there's also a readiness feature that's kind of like a lot of what you get from Garmin and Fitbit.

23:58Based on your overall score. Yeah, it's like a score.

24:02Huyen Tue Dao: So yeah, increased electrode surface area for better ECG, redesigned photodiodes, and the green LEDs are larger, which will be better and more efficient for your heart rate. But overall, I didn't think this was the kind of upgrade where you're like, ooh, I'm really tempted, even though I have the current one. Uh, it's, it was a, a more evolutionary, not revolutionary upgrade. I mean, I'm rocking the series seven. Um, and it's fine. You know, Tom and I talked about this on an upcoming live with it, uh, episode, but, uh, but yeah, I think that, you know, Apple saying like our heart rate sensing best in the biz.

24:43It's like, okay. Yeah.

24:45Huyen Tue Dao: Well, they tested against strapped ones and all of that. Yeah. Like, I mean, if that's true, that's great. Not everybody cares about that on the same level, but you know, let's just, you know, let's say we all do. You've got the readiness based on your overall, you know, score. You've got insights based on Apple intelligence that's, you know, trying to - Oh yeah. Redesigned health app gives you all of that stuff. Yeah. Keeping you healthy, new cardio fitness options. And yeah, I mean, the whole thing to me is like, great. I think that it is lost on a lot of people who are just like, I don't want to track myself that way.

25:26For the rest of us, and I know all three of us here do really care about that. This is a pretty cool option, but it's not your only option. So, you know, here's Apple, kind of trying to keep up with the garments and the fitzins.

25:41Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, yeah. And when, as someone who has all of those. I do actually have all of those. Yeah, no, and honestly, I'd have an Apple Watch if it actually integrated with Android because it's already been an amazing option for health tracking. I know a lot of my Android friends jumped ship to iOS because of the Apple Watch, and a lot of them are runners, cyclists, and things like that. I'd say like, yeah, this is definitely coming on par. Like as you said, readiness is something that pretty much everyone has their own version of. I'm curious about the AI insights because that is something, of course, that Google is doing with their Fitbit, with all of their Fitbits.

26:15Is it safe to assume that this is also possibly powered by Gemini as well?

26:20Huyen Tue Dao: It is. Well, it's powered by Apple Intelligence, which is a modified version of Gemini. So, yeah. Yeah. And we talked about kind of my experiences with the health app, the Google Health app, Sarah, on Live With It, where it's fine. Like, I think it, and I think you're right on the point that this is going to be a loss on a lot of people. I mean, I enjoyed hearing them talk about what HRV is and what it means because I already care about it a lot. But it is going to be lost on a lot of people. And I always wonder, especially with companies like Apple, like Google, like Samsung, what niche are they trying to fill and are they making any headway on it?

26:56Because there already are hyper-enthusiast devices out there, Garmin to a large extent and other devices, Whoop, of course. I wonder what this does for Apple, whether it's just, hey, we have these things too, so that they're not missing anything. But I'm not blown away either. These are all kind of like, yeah, integration of all health records. All of these other things are things that everyone else already has. So it's maybe just like, hey, leveling the playing field. Table stakes. Table stakes, exactly.

27:23Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, and if you missed it, health age, longevity are two of those tabs in the health app. But those will come to the other watches too. A lot of these features are like not exclusive to the new watch either, like syncing your health records or ordering labs from Quest or something like that, which is coming later this year. Apple Watch Series 12 available in ceramic now, along with its usual materials. And the Hermes version gets a radiant gold titanium, if you can afford the Hermes version. Not the Hermes version, but the regular Apple Watch Series 12 starts at$399. and the Ultra 4, 50 hours of battery life, 18 hours with workout tracking,$799.

28:06Huyen Tue Dao: Pre-order now, shipping September 18th. And those prices are the same as the previous series. So yeah, they did not give us the, and these are the watches that will stay in stock, which they usually do. So I'll be curious if they keep the Series 11 and the Ultra 3 available and whether they do price reductions on those or not. Uh, last thing we got was AirPods five, which takeaway is better active noise cancellation. Uh, these, these are available in two models, uh, AirPods, uh, five for$129. Or if you want wireless charging case and the little, uh, uh, ability to swipe for volume control,$149.

28:50Huyen Tue Dao: Uh, again, these are the AirPods, not the AirPods pro. So if you're like, wait, didn't they have a lot of these features? They did. And that was when I was first like, wait, I mean, volume, but that's... That's an AirPods Pro feature. Exactly, because I have the AirPods Pro. I was like, who doesn't do that? But yes, yeah. And wireless charging case, also an AirPods Pro thing that you can now get if you pay for the higher end AirPods 5. Pre-order now for those shipping September 18th. So there you go. Big day for John Ternus. Big day for Apple. and there's still lots more to think about, lots more to talk about, lots more to evaluate.

29:29Huyen Tue Dao: So Sarah, you're going to be doing a round table on all of this stuff that we're going to put up this weekend. Yes, along with Jen Cutter and Nika Monford and Terrence Gaines from the SnobOS podcast, we're all getting together. The show will go up on Saturday. We wanted to have a little bit of time to just think about, okay, what did we hear about? What do we want? You know, what were we interested in? or maybe not that interested in. And we're going to give that to you. It'll come out on Saturday. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Sarah, for jumping in and chatting with us. And we'll talk to you on the show again tomorrow.

30:08Sounds good. Have a good show, everybody.

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33:33Huyen Tue Dao: There's more we need to know today, so let's get to the briefs and the quick headlines. We're going to pack them all together in one. All right. Well, Anthropics' Jacob Coxon, a researcher who specializes in training new models, left the company saying he is worried that companies are working too fast to develop self-improving models to the point that they may spiral out of control. Quote, we are on track for a lot of the most aggressive of these scenarios where by the end of next year, things could be out of control already. Coxon left OpenAI earlier this year to join Anthropic because he preferred its approach to safety.

34:06Several researchers have left OpenAI, Anthropic, and other companies previously for similar reasons. Anthropic's leader of Alignment Science wrote on X, quote, Jacob is correct here. We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10 % within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to. Meanwhile, Anthropic declined to submit Mythos 5.1 to the UK's AI Security Institute for Testing before release. It was only released to US organizations.

34:41Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah. Jacob Coxon leaving to me felt like one of the more higher profile versions of someone who's worried about this. And my question in those is always like, OK, what are they going to do next? That's what I'm curious about. Like when Ilya Sutskover left and then began his own operation to try to promote safety. And I still have that question about Jacob Coxon. I'm curious, like, okay, he's very concerned about this. He's very knowledgeable. I want to see what he does. The post from Anthropic's leader of alignment science really threw me. I almost feel like it's irresponsible. Yes. But it's also very much in the vein of what Anthropic does, which is scare tactics about safety, which I don't even think are in their necessarily their own best interests.

35:26Huyen Tue Dao: If they really believe this, then they should be in a different business is what I think. Like, if that's true, then you should be doing something different than what you're doing. Don't be like, yeah, I think it could kill us all. But hey, you know what? Who are we to stop developing it? Like, it doesn't something doesn't track there. Yeah, it's really weird because I feel like normally, if you want to be cynical about it, most companies, if they believe that their technology was at this much of a risk, would either not say that out loud and cover it up or, you know, make, you know, like, you know, corporate speak for covering up such things and not be so blithely like, yeah, sure.

35:58We have a greater than 10 percent chance of killing everybody. I and it is kind of like a, well, do you want to stop? Do you want to like what are you doing about it? And it's not like this is happening in in isolation. We've got obviously Bernie Sanders and like calling for, you know, like I don't necessarily agree with all of the perspectives. But like, yeah, there's definitely public call like the ordinary people are already upset about like kind of like the side effects of all this development technology, like data centers and everything else and job market disruption. It feels very odd to sit here and have all this input come in.

36:33And again, I think we could classify that some people tended to think of Anthropik as the at some point in time ethical AI company. and to hear them say that it does feel very dissonant and very odd to feel like, what's the phrase, like polish? It feels like it's like the people, someone's polishing the silverware on the Titanic. Yeah, right, right. But a little bit like, so you want to do something about it? Like everyone's leaving.

36:55Huyen Tue Dao: I personally think it's greater than 10 % within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we are working on a plan to solve alignment and we would like to create a global interagency effort to reach a clear plan for alignment for superintelligence and containment is what I want to hear him say. Yeah, not - But we don't have a plan, so I don't know. I'm just going to go back to work now. Yeah, it's really odd. I'm not surprised. I'm surprised by my lack of surprise, but I would have expected a lot more, especially from Anthropic, frankly speaking. So we'll see. Yeah. OpenAI says one of its unreleased models solved the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem, which would be historic.

37:41Huyen Tue Dao: The equations explain how fluids move. OpenAI said approximately 10 ,000 agents worked on the problem. However, some mathematicians who have been doing work getting close to the problem, NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and an anthropic researcher, Levant Alpagy, have also been working on this research. And Buckmaster wrote publicly that he suspected OpenAI might have used prompts he put into codecs to help them in their research. Buckmaster says, we're one of the only people that were taking this approach. It seems coincidental that Codex and their agents took a similar approach. Buckmaster also alleges that OpenAI researcher Sebastian Bubeck wanted to remove Alpigy from authorship because he worked for Anthropic.

38:26Huyen Tue Dao: OpenAI denies accessing Buckmaster or Alpig's specific user data for the proof. They did say, while unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models. OpenAI does not train on inputs and outputs from enterprise users, and personal users can opt out. But if you don't opt out, then some of that data is not associated with you, but it just goes into the pool of training data. And I think that's what they're saying is like, well, if they were using a version where they hadn't opted out, then some of that data could have down the road informed them.

39:03Huyen Tue Dao: But what they are trying directly to say is we didn't go spy on their use of codecs. so fascinating especially since i don't necessarily give this point of view but a lot of people are postulating that you know prompt engineering is going to replace current programming and other engineering so in a in a sense do we have the structure for understanding ip in regards to prompting and data i mean to some extent but not really so it's fascinating yeah and this is another this is a very small example of what we were talking about earlier we're like well we need a framework for that so that we can judge this stuff better yes please um well we have to thank R.W.

39:38Nash for this next one and alerting us to it on the DTNS subreddit. Microsoft September patch fixes a record 972 vulnerabilities, with 112 of them being rated as high critical severity. Last month, Microsoft patched a record 620 and a record 570 the month before that. Just breaking records every single month. Boom, boom, boom.

40:00Huyen Tue Dao: I think this is a good news story because they are keeping up and patching more things than ever, which means that they are making it more secure. So I take that as a positive. Meta announced a personal agent called Muse, which is designed to anticipate your needs and work longer than typical chatbots, but do all the agentic stuff like, you know, do shopping for you or whatever you want. It has a separate app called Sentinel that will make sure it doesn't do things without your permission. And there's some personalization stuff. You can name your agent, You can create an avatar for it. You can customize its communication style.

40:37Huyen Tue Dao: You can use this for free. Meta says that for most people, that'll be good enough. But if you are a power user, you can pay for additional use and capacity for$20 a month or$100 a month. Muse is available right now in the United States on Android, iOS, and the web. Well, Suno announced new models for its music creation service that are trained entirely on a new data set that includes licensed data from music label partners Warner Music and BMG. Well, that's progress in the short. Sorry. Yeah. OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.5. Among the improvements, it can output in 2K resolution, has non-Latin language expertise, and the ability to make a sketch in ChatGPT and then have your sketch turned into a full image.

41:24Well, Waymo launched its service on Lyft in Nashville. the first market where it is available from both the Waymo app and a partner.

41:32Huyen Tue Dao: Yeah, usually it's been either or. Now it's both. That's interesting. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom declined to support a moratorium on building new data centers in the country, saying it's important for communities to see the benefits of data centers, which he said can be the magnet that clusters in other investments over time. Well, Motang noted that the Tom's Harvest story about a person posting on Reddit that they found more than 30 sticks of DDR4 266 RAM in their garage. Gold! From an old server, very old, his employer had given him when it was retired. He estimates the RAM is worth, wait for it, about$12 ,000, but can only be used in servers like Xeon, is it Epic?

42:21Yeah, it's Epic. Epic or Threadripper Systems. Yeah.

42:23Huyen Tue Dao: So this is not RAM you're going to put in your personal machine, you know, because people were like, can you send me a stick? And he's like, it's not going to be worth for you. But he could sell it to a data center for sure. That's sitting on a goldmine. Thanks to Greg N, who posted this one on the DTNS subreddit, The Guardian reports on internal documents from several U.S. police departments, New York City, Maine, California cities, issuing warnings about the fact that citizens might record them with Meta's smart glasses, which of course could be used for criminal or terrorist purposes. And the U.S.

42:59installed 20.2 gigawatt hours of battery capacity in Q2 2026, a new record for the country and enough storage to power about 700 ,000 homes. Overall, the U.S. is on track to install 71 gigawatt hours of battery capacity in 2026. And that's a 70 percent increase over 2025.

43:20Huyen Tue Dao: That's there's a long way to go on batteries, but that's that's encouraging. And a lot of it is not in the home. Some of it is people putting them in the homes, but a lot of it is on the power side of stuff for solar arrays and things. If you have feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show, please do reach out to us. One way to do it is on social networks, at Ttina Show on X, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon. For TikTok and YouTube, you can find us at Daily Tech News Show. Thank you. See CapitalOne.com for details. Hey, everyone. It's Adam, host of Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant.

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44:57All right, we end every episode of DT &S with some shared perspectives. Today, Nate has a question about eSems in Japan.

45:04Huyen Tue Dao: Yes, and luckily, the two people on the crew who most recently went to Japan are on the show today, me and Wen. Nate writes, hey, Tom and team, I'm going to Japan for a month shortly. I haven't visited since smartphone eSIMs became a mainstream thing, and I wondered if you or the DTNS audience had experience with them specifically in Japan. I've been recommended a company called Saley, which I hadn't heard of, and I downloaded an app called Erilo, which was well-reviewed in the UK App Store and seems reasonably priced. But I've not signed up for anything yet. I'd welcome any recommendations or advice.

45:39Huyen Tue Dao: I only really care about data, not calls and texts. Having all three is probably better, but I'm assuming just looking for data is simpler and probably cheaper. Arigato, Nate. Brilliant. I actually cheat a bit. I use Google Fi. So it generally rolls into. So you just roamed? Yeah, but I have used E-SIM in the past because when I had a cheaper Google Fi plan and we decided not to get a pocket Wi-Fi, which if you're not aware, it's kind of been like this little pocket, you know, Wi-Fi device that you bring with you was the standard for a very, very, very long time for internet connectivity for Japanese travelers.

46:14Did you, have you bought a separate eSIM or? Yeah.

46:17Huyen Tue Dao: I, I also use Google Fi roaming on my, on my fold, but for the iPhone, I have T-Mobile, which also gives me free roaming, but I've found that it can be spotty. So I went with Aralo because I have used them. I found them on eSIM database and they've worked very well for me. although I did have a problem with them in England, oddly. They were great in Switzerland, though. They were great in Germany, and they've been great in Japan and Korea. And when I went to Japan at the end of July, I used Erlo, and it was great. And I configured the iPhone so that Erlo was always my primary connection, but I kept the T-Mobile one active so that if the data wasn't great from Erlo, it would switch over to T-Mobile.

46:59Huyen Tue Dao: And between those to, you know, you have a few dropouts here and there when you're traveling through rural areas on a train maybe or something like that. But for the most part, it was great. And it worked really well for me. And it was reasonably priced. You can get them in whatever days you need and whatever megabytes you think you need or unlimited. So Aerolo was the one I've used. I've never used Saley. I don't know if you used Saley in the past or anything like that. Yeah, I have. It was relatively simple. I do believe that there are certain like for AeroLow, do you need like an eSIM per country or something like that?

47:32Huyen Tue Dao: Depends on the plan. So you can buy them for a single country or you can buy them for a region and they've got different regions in there. Okay. I think Saley is a pretty budget option. If I am remembering correctly, they do data only, which is why I was kind of so-so on them because I was trying to get a Japanese number, but I do think Saley, I've seen them at least advertise a lot from creators. They seem to be pretty solid. I didn't really have a problem when i used it it was pretty straightforward the app is very straightforward and i do think they're a little more budgety and again i believe it might depend on the plan but i think they generally have mostly data only plans so if if you're looking i think it also depends on on like your budget and if you really want to go super like budgety and save money um maybe look at salo salie but i'm with you i well i'm not with you i haven't tried aerolo yet but i've heard nothing but great things although i think most of these countries if you're staying within like the big three cities, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, you're going to be fine.

48:25But as Tom said, if you're going out to the rural areas or if you're on a train, you might drop out, but you generally should be good.

48:33Huyen Tue Dao: But yeah, most of the time you're good. The other thing I would point out is if you are interested in phone, which I know Nate says he's probably not worried about, a lot of countries have different rules on getting a phone number. So I would recommend going to a local provider's counter in the airport. That's when I wanted to get a phone number in Seoul, I went to the LGU plus counter and said, I would like the plan that gives me a phone number. And then they have to look at your passport and your ID, but you can get one and it's temporary and it doesn't cost actually that much more than the data only plans.

49:05Huyen Tue Dao: But that's one of the reasons you only see data only so much is that a lot of countries are like, no, you got to show an ID if you want a phone number. If you just want data, that's fine. Yeah. I think the same is at Narita because I consider getting a phone, but I've only ever saved for a couple of weeks, which feels a little bit short for a phone. But if I was going to save for a month or longer, yeah, definitely see what you can get at Narita Nate. There was a time when you needed a phone number to do reservations for certain things, which is why I did it in the past. But I think that time has passed now.

49:32Go to Tabelog and you can do reservations. Actually, since I last been, even last year, their English website is much better. They're much more fully featured. You can get reservations there. So enjoy, Nate. Enjoy Japan. Hopefully you get a good eSIM service and let us know which one you picked and what you liked about it. And if any of you are thinking about anything, whether that's the impending doom of AI, the iPhone duo, or how to get your data in foreign countries, let us know. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

50:05Huyen Tue Dao: Thanks to Nate for contributing to today's show. Thanks to Sarah Lane for being with us today. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech news show. You're the folks who keep us in business. Become a patron. Keep this stuff coming. Patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

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