Beeper’s Back Baby! - DTNSB 5062

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2:25Your first three videos are free at heygen.com slash pod. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-O-D. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 17th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up in the context of those stories, and help each other understand. Today, Dr. Nikki updates us on science funding in the U.S. and beepers back, baby. Beepers back, baby. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Quint Wittow. So let's start with what you need to know with a big story. I just, when I see Beeper, I can't help but want to like go full on alliterative, you know, with it. No, that's what you're supposed to do.

3:05Beeper is relaunching its all-in-one cross-service messaging app with an improved tech stack that's aimed at improving security. Also adding some premium features, which we'll talk about on the security front. Beeper will now offer direct end-to-end encrypted connections for platforms that support it. So this essentially means that Beeper won't have to rely on what it's very known for, having its cloud infrastructure relaying messages. This is going to keep messages and that data associated with those messages on device and encrypted via the messaging platforms approach. Beeper improved its free tier.

3:44It now allows for up to 12 accounts, which I think that's pretty generous. Beeper also launched the new Plus subscription tier. That's with some perks like message scheduling, incognito mode, voice note transcription, also the ability to manage up to 10 accounts. And that does include up to three accounts from any single service. So you can kind of mix and match that way. And then the Beeper Plus Plus tier, and yes, you heard that right. It's called Plus Plus, will offer unlimited access to multiple accounts per chat service. So it's kind of like the entire meal, unlimited, all you can eat, costs$49.99 per month.

4:25And Beeper is attempting to keep the services themselves happy and friendly to the work that they're doing. And to that end, they plan to relay ads shown in apps like Telegram as one example. So Telegram, if you're using the app, you might be served an ad. Well, in Beeper experience, if you're using Telegram, apparently those ads are going to come into the Beeper experience somehow. I don't know how exactly they're going to tackle that, but that way the impressions aren't lost and it keeps Telegram happy with what Beeper is doing. And all of this is pretty appropriate because this comes after the company was bought by Automatic.

5:00They're the owner of WordPress.com. That happened last year. And, you know, kind of in the shadow of what Beeper has done in the past, which is I'll try to work to allow Android users to chat with Apple iMessage users that involved servers in the cloud or rather Mac minis running iMessage in the cloud. Apple had some restrictions to make that impossible. And since then, Apple's rolled out, of course, the expansive RCS capabilities. So that kind of reduced the need for such a specialized service. So I don't know. We've talked a lot about Beeper on Android Faithful over the years. They've been very applicable to the conversation around messaging.

5:40What do you think of the new offering? Yeah, where do you stand on this? Do you need a multi-chat service at this point? I don't think, I mean, so that's the thing, though. I used to love multi-chat services. I use, is it Pigeon? Pigeon, yeah, that was one of them. Pigeon back in the day. And I think there was a couple others. And so it's so fun. Yeah, Trillian was the one that I used. I did use Trillian too. I love Trillian actually. And it's so funny because I think those were so essential back in the day. And yet, I don't know now in 2025, I did try using Beeper. And I don't know if my use habits have changed, but I found myself needing it less.

6:16But I'm actually really impressed by the Beeper tech stack. And so I'm not one. I just the jokes about all the other the cavalcade of chat apps that have come and gone in the last however many 20 years now or like maybe even longer than that. Oh, my gosh. I saw it's they're hard things to build. And the fact that they did this, keeping everything on device more or less and having end to end encryptions and supporting up to how many ever services actually feels like very impressive to me. I mean, it sounds like the team was pretty big at 30 plus combined. And so to offer all of these different services across several different clients is a pretty tough job, technically speaking.

6:59So I give them a lot of props for that. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we tend to rely on cloud services a lot in software is just because a lot of the business logic, we call it, a lot of the actual work, it's easy to kind of combine it in one place so that you have a consistent experience. You don't have to write the same logic over and over again, but they've taken the burden on themselves to create a, you know, like end in encrypted and that it keeps it on device. So I think that's, it's, it's, I love that because so often it's easy to be like, well, this is going to be really hard.

7:31It's going to take a lot of, it's going to be a lot of support. It's going to be a lot of like person power. So I actually congratulate them. I feel like that's one thing that Beeper always, and through the whole iOS iMessage saga, they just seem very willing to do the work and make something happen. And so I think if anything, especially as an engineer, I appreciate the chutzpah, the moxie that it takes to do this. They don't seem to have a problem picking the scab. No, they don't. Let's not pick away the scab. so what's fascinating to me also is the idea that hey we actually want to play nice so and because telegram is open source i wonder to what extent they looked at the open source code saw where like the ad relay the relay the ads were happening and they kind of ported that over to clients and i kind of love that because that's i i it's hard to describe again the amount of effort and care it would take to do just that but that's like and i feel like the one thing that sounds It would be really challenging.

8:32It's challenging. When I read that, I was like, how? Like, I don't we don't normally hear of apps like this relaying the ads like that. And presumably they don't get they're not getting a cut, of course, because they're Telegram. I would. Yeah, that was a question that I had for sure. I mean, I wouldn't think so because, you know, they're basically pulling the users out of the apps. If they truly want those services to be OK with what they're doing. Yeah. Then I guess they wouldn't suddenly say, you know, we could take a piece of a portion of the pie. Yeah. Yeah. So that just feels like, oh, man, we just want to exist.

9:04We just want to provide this experience. We're going to play ball with whatever y 'all need to do to make money. We're not going to like that. And that's like, I think that's really cool. I don't know. Like it feels like Bieber's mission is just we want to do this thing. We want to make chat easier for everyone. And we're going to do whatever it takes. That's just what it communicates to me. Maybe I'm just being like extra geeky about it because I'm a software developer. But I think that is so interesting. and of course the elephant in the room is my message and it seems like i and i i don't necessary now right yeah and like but it seems like they're trying to do it in a way that doesn't get them in trouble like last time just like hey because they keep getting into trouble you know there's been and and i i think what i appreciate about beeper is that the multiple times that they've tried and then hit a roadblock and then tried and then hit a roadblock because like i said we've talked about this company for quite a while now.

9:58I give them a lot of credit for never, never hitting the point where they were like, I guess this just doesn't work. I think the point that you brought up though, at the very beginning about the too many messaging apps problem, I think it's really interesting that over time, I can at least speak for myself, over time, I have not had less platforms that I find myself chatting on. I definitely found myself on more platforms chatting, be it true messaging apps, be it social services or social media services that have chats and DMs integrated and everything. I have an entire folder on my home screen that is filled with social slash messaging and it's huge.

10:42And so I would think that facing the most amount of destinations for my chats than I ever have that an app like this would be appealing to me. And yet anytime, like you said, anytime I try Beeper or try apps like it now, I'm kind of like, eh, well, I'll just stick with the other. And I don't know why that is. Like it's overly complicated. I should want everything to be unified in a single place, but for some reason I don't. And I don't know why. Is it because it may be we like mentally segment certain chats, certain chat applications to certain things like certainly i don't really want my instagram dms in with my personal family because half the time there's someone trying to sell me something or the fraughtness that is being a a woman on the internet um but then also i assume like yeah like i wouldn't i don't know like like i see i speak i speak to certain people on whatsapp for a very particular reason i speak to most of my family and signal just like yeah i just wonder there's certain very active messaging platforms.

11:43And then there's kind of almost passive messaging. Yeah, exactly. I don't really DM with people who are really close to me in Instagram. Yes. I get a lot of incoming messages or updates to things that I posted there. I have a lot of messaging activity that happens on Instagram, but it's not the same. It's not like communicating with you in Discord or Slack or something like that. So yeah, that's probably a part of it. But anyways, fascinating nonetheless. I do wish they had called their highest tier beep beep. Like, I don't know, beep or beep beep. Maybe that's the beep or beep plan, which is the premium plan, which by the way, I didn't have a price for that $9.99 per month for the premium plan.

12:26And then I did mention the price of the beep beep plan, which it's not called beep beep. It's called plus plus$49.99 per month. So there you go. That's, and that's like another thing. Like that's, I appreciate that they're working so hard and offering you like quite, quite a bit for what they're charging. Cause yeah, I know a few dollars a month might be seem a lot, but if you need it, then maybe it's worth a job. It sounds like a power user at that point. Yeah, totally. You might find value for it. Yeah. It's kind of like the social services that you, they're the services that manage scheduling across many different platforms for you.

12:57You'll pay a lot for that if you're doing that a lot and you have to automate, you always have to switch between and everything. So that makes sense though. like buffer and things like that. I presume you, Jason, are having to do a lot of that these days, like just copy and paste. I'm very much on the fence right now of possibly pulling a trigger on something to manage it just because it is very complicated, you know? And I do have to pay for that, you know,$30 a month for, I can't remember the one that I'm looking at right now. And yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a pricey, you know, pricey service, but you know, how much time do you spend?

13:28You know, that's, and at the end of the day, that's what beeper is relying on here. How much time are you spending going between the cognitive load and everything? Yeah. Anyways, that's Beeper. All right. Well, we'll see how Beeper does with this new rollout. We wish them luck. I wish them well. Gosh, good speed on your mission to bring all the chats together. But we are brought together. Our DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. We want to take the time to thank Justin Zellers, Carmine Bailey, Chris Beneteau, and welcome a new patron, C. Jobling. C-drapping, C-drapping, C-drapping. We're so sorry.

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17:52There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. All right, well, Google officially announced its next Pixel hardware event for August 20th. So the Pixel 10 series, along with Pixel Watch 4, and possibly the new Pixel Buds are expected at the event, which takes place in New York. The phones are expected to be powered by the new Tensor G5 chips, And another rumor making the rounds is the possibility that the new Pixel Fold will be the first foldable rated for dust protection with an IP68 rating. There are also credible rumors pointing to a new line of magnetic Qi 2 charging technology for the Pixel line, codenamed Pixel Snap.

18:32Pixel Snap. Snap, snap. IP68 on a foldable. That's pretty big news. That's a big deal. You know, Pixel hardware, it is coming from Google and it is premium hardware. But I think there's an ongoing perception that it still kind of lags behind in some ways behind the Samsung Galaxy S Ultras and all that kind of stuff. But to be able to say our foldable is the one that's, you know, managed to solve the dust protection issue that foldables have would be a big deal for Google. So props if that happens. Absolutely. I was really excited. And it's weird because I think we hear about the specs leaking just for months and months at a time.

19:12And to be honest, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and I'm a current Pixel 9 Pro Fold user, was not that impressive. It's slightly better. So it's like that iterative, like, oh, it's a little bit better. So it didn't really seem worth the, okay, I'm going to, you know, go ahead and trade in and spend more money on a new foldable that I didn't really need. But when I saw the IP68, I was like, oh, shoot. This is a thing. Because even the Samsung Z Fold 7, which has gotten a lot of really sterling reviews, is still IP48. So it's not protected against us. So this could be a big deal. Could be a big deal. We will see.

19:47Federal Judge Alsup has permitted three authors to bring a nationwide class action lawsuit against Anthropic for its alleged use of copyrighted books that were downloaded from pirated sources to train its AI system. This follows ALSEP's original ruling that some of the company's use of legally obtained, i.e. bought, copyrighted content actually constituted fair use. Anthropik's possible use of up to 7 million books downloaded from pirate sites could make the company liable for damages. We're talking the tune of around billions of dollars if the case against them is successful. So it is given the green light, and we'll see where this leads.

20:30meta platforms ceo mark zuckerberg and former executives have reached an agreement to settle an eight billion dollar shareholder lawsuit stemming from privacy violations related to the facebook cambridge analytical scandal sorry analytical scandal from 2018 the settlement happened shortly before zuckerberg peter teal mark anderson cheryl sandberg and desmond Hellman were set to testify about their knowledge of the details related to the case. While financial details of the settlement have not been revealed publicly, it's likely the payout was less than the$8 billion originally asked for. Yeah, this is kind of crazy because it's been a long time coming.

21:11And literally on the day that I think Marc Andreessen was set to take the stand. And then I think the next week it was going to be Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel and all these major, major names in both technology and whether we like it or not politics right now, were set to essentially put their, you know, put their voices on the record about this scandal. Poof, it all goes away because of massive amounts of settlement money. What do you know? Nothing surprises me. Also, my bad. Sorry, Mark Andreessen. My bad. I said Mark Andreessen. My bad. My bad. But yeah, funny that. That's a magic trick they pulled there.

21:51Anyway. Yeah. Anyways, Roblox is tightening its chat security by requiring personas age verification using facial scanning, or you could provide a government ID. This is all applies to users over 13 years old. Without that proof, teens will have their messages filtered and monitored for harmful conduct. Those with proof will have an unfiltered chat experience along with gaining access to a reasonably new feature that I only just learned about, a party social feature that basically allows up to six players to group up across the platform and play together. So that's something that will be reserved for those who have the unfiltered experience, which comes with that age verification.

22:34So more and more, we're just going to continue, I imagine, hearing more and more from services, be it chat services, social services, gaming services, all about requiring this stuff because it's in the sights of governments, both here in the U.S. and the U.K. and abroad. Well, Adobe introduced new generative AI features within its Firefly suite that allow users to create realistic sound effects from voice prompts or text instructions. Users can synchronize the sound with visual content in a timeline interface. The Firefly update also offers support for composition referencing and a wide range of style presets.

23:12So when I'm playing around with Adobe, I can go pew pew pew pew and it will turn it into like laser sounds and stuff. Yeah, laser fire, yes. Yeah. Although Mew Pew, what I'm going for with Mew Pew is the Mew is a cat meow and the Pew is a laser fire. Mew, pew, pew, pew. Turn that into something, Adobe. That's all I ask. Okay. Someone who has Firefly, please do that and send it to us. I need to hear this now that Jason said it. And by the way, I'm pretty sure like maybe five or 10 % of the listeners got that. That's a deep buzz out loud cut. Just, just saying, just throwing that out there. All right.

23:46I didn't get it. My bad. That is a Veronica Belmont reference. If you, if you have been around long enough to check out buzz out loud, you know, the mute you. Uh, TikTok launched a beta set of features aimed at songwriters who want to showcase their own copyrighted music on their profile pages. This is limited to a select group, at least at launch right now during the beta release. But artists will be able to apply a songwriter label to their profile and then also display select tracks from their catalog that they've written in a songwriter music tab. The new features are apparently the result of an extensive survey that they conducted with more than 870 songwriters.

24:26It also follows similar features that have been available to artists on Spotify since 2020. Totally makes sense. Lots of music discovery happening on TikTok. And so, yeah, good feature. All right, y 'all. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper. All right. Every month we've been checking in with Dr. Nikki on what's been happening with U.S. science funding. And today we have a quick update and a brewing debate over animal models. Dr. Nikki, welcome back to our monthly check-in. Hello, Tom. We are indeed back. We have some news, but not as much as usual, which is kind of a good thing.

25:04I don't remember if I mentioned it in one of our updates, but I have been expecting that as the year went on, the pace might slow down and it seems like that might be happening. What do we have to pay attention to this month? I'm very glad that you're correct because as much as I love being on the show, I don't love covering disastrous. Yeah, we've got MOAs and blind mice to talk about, right? Much more fun. Yeah. Well, the first thing I want to talk about is kind of an overall because I didn't want to do case by case, but we in the previous months, we talked about how NIH was terminating some specific grants at different universities.

25:40And now kind of the pendulum is slowly swinging back and people have filed lawsuits. And so across the country, judges are filing and ordering NIH to stop terminating specific grants, specifically politically sensitive ones. And now in even some cases, they're reinstating them to the scientists. So good news. I have heard they've been, they said they will reinstate them, but they're also kind of dragging their feet on that to be expected, but it's generally good news. And most of those are not being appealed. So it seems like that will stand. Yeah. And it's been in multiple states and yeah, like multiple universities as well.

26:22So yeah, You notice also for Cornell, it was like on again, off again, on again. So it's slowly coming back. Probably not all of them, but some of them. All right. What else we got? Over the last few days, we've got a few stories. So first of all, NIH has been found to, people found out that they have been dismissing advisory council members that do not line up with the current administration's views. So these people are specifically the ones that make the final decisions on NIH grant funding. So still following within the trend of making grant funding more what they want it to be. And the journal Nature reported on this and found out that the replacement candidates are having their social media presences screened for negative views on the current administration.

27:09So they are packing the court. Well, this is the administration putting people in place to make decisions that they approve of, basically, for grants going forward versus the grants that have already been in the works. Correct. Yeah. So not as great news on that front for NIH once again. And then we've got one more piece of news that is like ongoing. We talked about the proposed congressional cuts to all the federal funding agencies and others. Yeah, this is the rescission thing where they're saying we can save this money, but we need Congress to approve us to not spend it. Exactly. So that went through Senate.

27:46Senate rejected some of these proposed cuts and now it is in the House. And the House is changing the proposed cuts to something slightly less drastic. So I think overall it's I don't know if it's good news. It's less bad news. OK, so this is once again for the proposed 2026 fiscal year that starts in October. So, for example, for NASA, they had proposed initially like a 50 % cut. Now it's down to 18%. It's still a ton of money. That's billions of dollars. Sure. But it's less worse. Same thing for NSF. Initially proposed a 50 % cut. Now back to 25%, which is still a lot, but less. And then like the cut for the Department of Energy was rejected.

28:31So far, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, I don't think I had covered, but initially had a proposed 32 % cut. This is, you know, the people that overview protected endangered species and things like that down to 6%. And then we've got the EPA proposed 54. Now the proposal is 23%. So lots of cuts, smaller than initially, which we had expected. And I think you had commented on that. And now we're just waiting for the House's final vote to see if that's actually going to be the case or maybe will be less or more. And we're all holding our breath, at least those of us applying for grants. Yeah, of course. And the other thing to consider when you think about this is this amount of money, the nine point something billion that was originally in the recession bill is a small percentage, like a vanishingly small percentage of the federal budget.

29:23So, yeah, if you're someone who's like, well, I want the government to save money. Changing this percentage doesn't have much of an effect on the overall government budget, especially because they just passed another bill, which increases spending in other areas. So a lot of this is performative and doesn't have a big impact on the bottom line of the federal government. I think the goals are different. I mean, from what we've been seeing, it looks like reducing or tampering down research. From my point of view, scientific research seems to be more the goal and money is the quickest way to do that.

29:58Right. It's not exactly about balancing the budget. It seems to be the case. Now, we've got one last story here that that's kind of the major updates, but this one's brewing. It's not something that has happened yet, but it's a debate that could affect future funding. Tell me about this one. Yeah, let me lay the groundwork for this. So last week at a workshop, one of the interim directors of the NIH announced that from starting then, early, early July, future funding opportunities would no longer include research that exclusively, exclusively uses animal models. So, and that's kind of all we know about this.

30:37Instead, they want to encourage new approach methodologies, NAMs as they call them, things like computer modeling and AI, AI not defined in this instance, things like organoids, which are organs made up of stem cells that are in the lab. If you've ever seen them, they're very cool. They're clear. Oh yeah. I think they're really interesting. Interesting. So when you say animal models, I'm sure a lot of people thought you meant a like generative model or a computer model, right? You should probably precise. Yeah. I mean like mice. Explain the difference here. Yeah. So like I do goat research. So my goats are my animal model for Alzheimer's disease.

31:10And then there's like mice and rats. And those are the most commonly used animal models that we use for drug testing. Anything from behavioral testing to, I don't know, different genetic lines and all these things that animals are used for in research. NIH wants to reduce, if not eliminate that. Although we haven't really been given clarification. And this applies obviously to actual testing, like you said, but also just observation where you keep some goats around and see what they do, you know, or maybe take a biopsy to see what the DNA is like or whatever. There's a whole spectrum of what that could be, which is why I find this pretty concerning.

31:50Specifically, they didn't give detail on the timeline. They didn't say if it was starting today or in 50 years. They were just throwing it out there like a bomb. Yeah. And so what this really affects is what we call NOFO. So these are notice of funding opportunities. So the NIH comes out and says, hey, we want to fund you for X, Y, and Z. And now from now on, apparently they've started doing this. They can't have one of those that is requesting only animal research. So it leaves some loophole where like, okay, you could do two of your three aims of this grant that are animal research. And one of them is an AI model of the animal or something like, which really just creates more paperwork than, than advancing science personally.

32:31Uh, that's how I feel. So that's what it seems to be. And there have been requests in the past. So let's say you wanted to find a new transgenic mouse line that does a really good job of replicating Alzheimer's disease. You'd put out a funding notice to try and get scientists to work on that. Um, they can't do that anymore or they don't want to do that anymore. So that's where we're at. Um, questions. Yeah. So, so what kind of effect would this have? So it obviously is having an immediate chilling effect, but it doesn't actually stop using animal models. I can tell you just from Daily Tech News show that I don't think the computer models we have, while they're very useful, are a replacement for direct observation.

33:14And I know you agree with that. What other effects would happen if this were to become the case? Well, I do want to talk about that. For example, they said AI or computer modeling. This one kind of falls under this like new directives that they have. They want to do a lot more AI research and I'm not sure they know exactly what they mean by AI. Yeah, they're leaving a broad. Right. Because with any kind of computer modeling, you can only feed it data that we already know and have collected through research. And they're not capable of coming up with their own new experiments or information. They can tell you, oh, these gaps are missing from what you've told me.

33:50So I don't see how an AI, quote unquote, would replace something like a behavioral study where We're looking for things that we don't yet know, which is also how my research works. I would imagine there are some things with digital twins, which have become very well developed where you can create a model that is, you know, very close to the same thing as a human heart. Same thing as a kidney and probably in some simpler animals. You could do the whole animal and we're getting better at those all the time. But again, those are for how the systems work, how the biology works, not the behavior. Yeah.

34:26And AI is really great for doing a lot of manual labor. And we talked about how the latest chemistry Nobel Prize was AI related, right? Like they use AI to screen a bunch of drugs against a bunch of proteins. That's a really good AI thing. Take A, match B 5 million times and see if any of it works, right? But that's only, that works because it's math based. if I'm going on my goats and I want to see if exposed to a certain behavior, they develop a certain disease. And I don't know whether it's going to happen or not. AI will also not know whether it's going to happen or not and what it's going to look like.

35:01And neither will something like an organoid, which is again, like these like stem cell based organs, which are great for, I want to inject a drug into this heart and see if it beats faster, but not, I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or we also have like organs on a chip, which is kind of like similar to what you were saying, where they like replicate things that we already know about these models. And I actually overall think it's really great to encourage non-animal models ethically, like animal modeling has its ethical concerns, but we're not really there yet or else we would already be doing it.

35:32That's kind of the point of contention where I'm like, we all want to do this, but we don't have the technology. It leaves aside a lot of ethical considerations and it's cheaper. if you... Yeah, it's way cheaper. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And if you want to continue to make more digital twins, you need to have the actual model, the actual physical model to research off of and test and make sure that it works. So, yeah. But again, this is not something that has happened. It's something that was thrown out and has had real effects. Don't get me wrong, but it hasn't been set down yet. Well, apparently all future...

36:13grant requests going forward will be of this order. But it wasn't, it wasn't, it's not retroactive. I'm going on what you said earlier, right? It's not a, yeah, it's not an actual directive. So it's not a directive, but it doesn't have to be. So they can just decide we don't want to request any more animal grants. And that is so far, like we haven't seen any in the last week that have come out requesting only animal grants. Some, some of the people talking about it mitigated their claims and they're like, don't worry, we're not phasing out animal research right now. And then some other people said we're definitely phasing out animal research yeah well i think when i say it's not written down yet i'm not saying that as a don't worry i'm saying that as a like we kind of don't know what it means yeah yeah right we don't have a reference document to look at yeah yeah and i think this is actually a good decision if it were to be implemented over like two decades and highly supported with funding specifically for transitioning to non-animal models but it seems like they're just being like yoinking opportunities instead which is a little bit less constructive.

37:13And, you know, again, my research is on animal models. I have no idea how I would find out what goats do if I don't have goats. If you can't watch the goats. How do I do that? I don't know. No, I got it. Well, Nikki, thank you so much for bringing all of this information to us. If folks want to follow more of what you do, where should they go? Of course, I can be found at NicoleAckermans.com. That's also my handle on Blue Sky, and I will be posting this there as soon as it goes up on DTNS. Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks so much. I think that just goes to show how far away we are from certain things that we probably, like the real kind of pro AI, like AI is the best thing since sliced bread.

37:56And, you know, we've got super intelligence right on the, there's a lot to figure out before we ever get to that point. And this, I think the point that Dr. Nikki made about if we were there, we'd already be doing it is, you know, I think that's really interesting. A future where we don't need animal models, you know, ethically speaking, I think that's a great target, but sounds like we're a ways away from that. No, I was thinking the exact same thing too. And I mean, and that's just literally almost how things work is like, if we could, we'd already be doing it. We'd be doing it. We'd be doing it.

38:27That's just, yeah, how it works. All right. Well, if you have feedback on anything that gets brought up on the show, get in touch with us on the socials. We are at DTNestShow on X, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon at Mastodon.social. For TikTok and YouTube, you can find us at Daily Tech News Show.

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40:17We end every episode of DT &S with some shared wisdom, and today Mike is helping us understand. Mike writes, In an email you read a few episodes ago, you mentioned that Android's battery settings allow you to charge the battery to a max of 80%. I immediately enabled that on my new Pixel 9a. In my humble opinion, it should be enabled by default, allowing users to opt into overclocking their battery if they want, but extending the useful lives of the devices by default. Degrading battery life is usually the reason I end up buying a new phone nowadays. I wish this ability existed on all battery-operated devices.

40:53My primary mode of transportation is a one wheel and I live at the top of a very large hill. The one wheel has regenerative braking. And if I leave the house with a full charge, the brakes fail because there's no room left in the battery to absorb the energy. I wish it was possible to automatically cut off charging at 80 percent so I don't have to babysit it as it charges. Mike from Underwater, Austin, Texas. That sounds like a risky reason. Yeah, the brakes fail. And you live at the top of the hill. Those two things do not compute for me. That's a challenge. Yeah. And to get back to the kind of the phone aspect of this, maybe because I don't know about like setting it to max of 80 by default, like out of the box and then telling people you can overclock.

41:40Like my thought instead is maybe add it as part of the onboard experience because Pixel, you know, throws a million different screens at you. Do you want to do this? It allows for blah, blah, blah. Do you want to do that? That way people can decide, like, would you prefer extending the life health of your battery or maximum performance? And depending on how you answer that, you know, and it tells you what or why. But that seems like the fairer approach. Automatically digging it down to 80 percent. I don't know. That seems like a little overkill. I get where he's coming from because the battery life is really incredibly important.

42:14But maybe giving people choice. That's, you know, choice from the onset. That's what I would push for. I would also say that knowing how companies work, that either in the more generous perspective, that there might be some legal, like something around marketing legal about what you say something is and what it is when it gets to the consumer. Possibly, maybe. I don't know. There's some weird something about that. The other thing that's charitable is that companies basically, like hardware gets sold on the spec. Like, I mean, that's like we have these little tiny spec wars. And so if they're giving you a phone that's only that's by default charging to 80 percent that and then maybe that ties in again into more of a legal argument.

42:50They're still giving you a phone that's slightly worse than it could possibly be. So there might be something hard to communicate. It'd be hard to communicate that. So I think more company just be like, you got this big stonking battery, you know, and they just want it. What do you want to do with all that power? What are you thinking about? If you have insight into a story, share it with us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Thank you, Wyn. Thanks to Dr. Nikki. Thanks to Mike for contributing to today's show. 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.

43:24We'll see you tomorrow.

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