GameStop Bids $56B to Buy eBay - DTNS 5261

0:00Parles-tu français? Hablas espagnol? Parle italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash ACAST. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. 48 million people in the United States are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 24.

0:47They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once. I'm balancing work and being a mom at the same time. And I'm still on track to graduate with my bachelor's next year. So what do today's young people need to truly thrive? Tune in to good things from Lemonada Media to hear the six-part Thrive series. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, It doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

1:26It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Hannah, I just Venmo'd you for dinner. Obsessed. I'm literally spending it right now on the lip gloss that's been sitting in my cart. What do you mean spending it right now? You instantly spend your balance with the Venmo debit card. Stop. Say more. More exactly. The more you do with Venmo, the more you get, like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Get the Venmo debit card or checkout online. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply.

2:01Max$100 per month. See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.

2:23this is the daily tech news for monday may 4th 2026 may the 4th be with you uh we tell you what you need to know give you the important context and to help each other understand today game stop your favorite mean stock from 2021 got a new ambition they want to buy ebay oh yeah i i totally saw that one coming yeah i was reading the tea leaves i saw it coming You were possibly the only one, if that's true. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Rod Dunnley. Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.

2:59Yeah, well, you already know the punchline. GameStop has made an unsolicited offer to buy eBay in a$56 billion cash and stock deal, proposing$125 per share, which is nearly 20 % premium to eBay's most recent close anyway, so they'd be giving a premium. GameStop already holds about 5 % of eBay through shares and derivatives. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen says he is ready to take the bid directly to shareholders and wage a proxy fight if eBay's board resists. So this is a bit of a hostile kind of proposal. Is it hostile and proposal together? They're the sound kind of counterintuitive to each other. But anyways, if it's completed, the deal would see Cohen lead the combined company.

3:50He's arguing that merging eBay's marketplace with GameStop's 1600 US stores could create a, quote, legit competitor to Amazon. And then to that end, he envisions using stores for things like intake, fulfillment, live commerce, of course, all that kind of stuff. eBay says it is reviewing the deal, of course, probably because it has to. But I'm really curious about this one. And I know that you wrote about this for daily tech headlines. So, Rob, you've done some pouring through this automatically. This was a bit of a surprise. Got to say it was a huge surprise. If you couldn't tell, I was being facetious in the open.

4:31I had no clue that this was coming. I don't think anyone had any clue that this was coming. And honestly, I don't know what the market, what they want to think about it. The price seems right. But today in the trading, the stock price isn't skyrocketing like you think it might if there was a legitimate offer made to come and buy the company. So this one is interesting. Now, as I think about it, there are some things that make sense. You know, we forget how big GameStop is, how many stores they have. I mean, they have over four. Was it almost 1600 stores in the United States alone? Yeah. So if you're thinking that, well, it becomes now the consignment shop for eBay, that makes a lot of sense.

5:10That's something that they could turn that around very quickly. And people just get, you know, if they already know where GameStop is and you want to sell some stuff on eBay, you just take it here and drop it off. And it kind of just happens. You can also go pick your stuff up that you've purchased on eBay there as well. So that kind of makes sense. What doesn't necessarily make sense is that eBay is way bigger than GameStop. Now, I know at the end of the day, this is about, well, can eBay or can GameStop get the financing? And from what we're reading so far, it looks like they've secured quite a bit to be able to do this.

5:42But GameStop itself is not a huge entity as far as its market cap. So the fact that it would be buying a company as big as eBay is the thing that has a lot of folks raising their eyebrows. Yeah, I mean, it really, yes. I mean, is David and Goliath the right analogy? Probably not because they're versus and this would be a combined effort potentially. Although maybe David and Goliath works if it's a hostile sort of takeover. But yeah, like you said, eBay, its market cap is almost four times larger than GameStop, which is the company that's looking to buy eBay, right? So as you mentioned, heavily reliant on financing.

6:20um cohen is saying to that end that gamestop has around 9.4 billion in cash and liquid investments um at least as of last january that could help to fund the deal so he's saying hey you know we have money to throw at this as well um cohen also promising around 2 billion in cost cuts at ebay within the first year if this is to go through i mean this is yeah this it's just really interesting to see a company punching so many weight classes above its own weight. And I'm no expert in acquisition mathematics, but if this all works out, I'm going to be really curious to understand kind of how that plays out from a pure math standpoint.

7:11How does a company that is much smaller in market cap like GameStop end up with a deal. And I think at the end of the day, it just comes down to can they convince financing that this is a sound strategy that CEO Ryan Cohen is saying the right things and you know what, this might actually be the best option for eBay. Right. What they're hoping is that from the investor standpoint, it's like, if you buy it, do I get more money than if you don't? I mean, that is what it's down to. And if they've secured the financing for that, it can happen. Also, from GameStop standpoint, they have to be looking at this that, you know, 2021 was a weird time that you had regular everyday people that kept the company and they were pushing it to the, you know, to the folks who were, you know, who were just doing blind shorts on that stock.

8:05But I don't know. 1 ,700 % value surge 1 ,700 % during that time. That was a really weird situation. It was very weird. And they said, well, we can't necessarily bank on wood because here's the thing for GameStop. More and more people will continue to download games digitally. They just will because GameStop served an absolute purpose before. You wanted a game. You go to the GameStop. They always had it. They had it. If you were done with the game, you could sell your game back. That was a great, great business model that they had. But in today's world, people just don't buy physical games like that.

8:41Not to the point where you can support the number of stores they have. So GameStop is looking, OK, well, what do we do next? What is the next thing? We already have 5 % of eBay and we do have all of these stores all over the place everywhere. wear. So if we were to get the rest of eBay, we really could, you know, ramp up into maybe a, as I said, like a, you know, one of those businesses, a consignment shop type of thing, where you take your stuff to drop it off and then they, they package it up, they sell it, they take a percentage off the top. And then, you know, you, you just get your, you know, you get a little bit less, but you didn't have to worry about it.

9:15You just dropped it off. So almost think of selling something on eBay, almost like just shipping something. When you take it to the UPS store, take it to the FedEx store, you just take it to GameStop, drop your stuff off, you get paid and you don't have to worry about all the logistics of doing everything else. So that could be the next thing for them because they do have that real estate. And that's something that a lot of buyers would probably, you know, really, I as a seller on eBay would love to be able to do something like that. Yeah, it's interesting that this news comes now just from a purely like in my own world perspective, because not very far from here is a shopping center here in Petaluma.

9:53and yes the GameStop has been there for as long as I've lived here you know which is at this point I guess somewhere around like you know what is it like 10 11 years I can't even remember off the top of my head math is hard uh no probably more like 13 years 13 14 years there's been a GameStop there and it just closed its doors and like literally a month ago that thing goes out of business and in my mind I'm thinking like oh boy here it goes for GameStop starting to see the you know more of the shops uh shutting down maybe this is the revitalization effort you know this is about GameStop as well as about like, what can we do?

10:25I think it's a really great point that you bring up. Like, how do we reactivate those stores and put them to really solid use? Now, Cohen is comparing this to, hey, who knows? Maybe we can give Amazon a run for its money. Long, long way away from this idea being that scale, but kind of gives you a sense of, I suppose, his ambition and and the potential opportunity for these stores. Yeah. Crazier things probably happened. Yeah. When I initially saw it, I thought, wow, this is really weird. But when you think about it, it's like, oh, okay, this could work. That could work. So maybe it'll work. This is definitely something that we'll continue to pay attention to.

11:06We're listening, CEO Ryan Cohen. We're listening. We'll see where you take it. DTNets is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Philip Shane, Paul Boyer, D-Laser, our brand new patrons, Runhurt Redneck, Megatron and Philip. We got raises from David and Peter and returning patrons, Jude and David. So thank you to all of you. Active. Thank you. Yeah. Love Monday.

11:36This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

12:20With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly.

13:07Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done.

13:17Running a business means juggling a lot of moving parts. And when your communication tools can't keep up, things start to slip. Missed calls, slow replies, scattered conversations. They're not just frustrating. They're lost opportunities and revenue left on the table. That's where Quo comes in. Spelled Q-U-O. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90 ,000 businesses. One shared business number for calls and texts, so every conversation stays visible, organized, and accountable. It works from an app or computer. You can keep your existing number, add teammates, and sync your CRM, letting you scale without adding complexity.

13:59And with built-in AI, Quo logs calls, summarizes conversations, and flags next steps, even after hours. Stop missing customers. Stop leaving revenue on the table. Try Quo free and get 20 % off your first six months at quo.com slash tech. That's q-u-o dot com slash tech. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Make Mother's Day even more special at Whole Foods Market. Kick off brunch or dinner with quality cheese and charcuterie with no synthetic nitrates. Then go seafood. There's an abundance on sale at Whole Foods Market, where it's all sustainable while caught or responsibly farmed. At the bakery, grab seasonal treats like their strawberry pretzel cream pie, and you can't go wrong with a ready-to-heat quiche Lorraine, deviled eggs, and fresh-cut fruits to go.

14:52Celebrate mom with Whole Foods Market.

14:58All right, there's plenty more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. Anthropic is forming a$1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and other private equity investors to sell and implement AI tools directly inside of companies. The new entity will act as a consulting and deployment arm for Anthropic with focus on teaching private equity companies how to embed AI across operations to cut costs and boost efficiency. The deal targets companies in sectors like healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and financial services. The new entity will function less like a product and more like a sales and integration machine somewhere between consulting and deployment with engineering and integration support fully embedded into the approach.

15:40Bloomberg also reported on perfectly timed rumors that OpenAI is finalizing its own joint venture called the Deployment Company to deploy AI inside private equity firms with a reported$4 billion fundraise. So, Jason, this one is really interesting to me. If you think about, you know, a lot of people have a lot of concern, probably deservedly so, about AI is going to take my job. This is one where AI is going to take your job potentially, but not necessarily how you think about it. What these companies are looking to do, when you think about these companies, these management companies that come in and often maybe do a leverage buyout, what they're looking to do is make a profit on the money that they put up as quickly as possible.

16:21So what they're thinking about AI for, where they want to deploy the AI is how can we how can we figure out as quickly as not even humanly possible at this point, as computerly possible that we can go in and extract the value out? What do we sell? What do we you know, what do we trim off? What do we keep? What do we reinvest in? They want to make those decisions at the speed of light. And I see this coming in to be an aid for tools like a Bain Capital or just these management companies to come in, do these buyouts and then try to get rid of cost as quickly as possible as they do the restructure.

16:56Yeah, it's kind of an integrated kind of infrastructure into into their business right from the get go. So, you know, it makes it less of a how do we implement anthropic tools or how do we implement, you know, open AI, as you said, is working towards this, too. How do we bring them into the enterprise? This is almost like embedded into the company from the beginning. This I don't know, this this whole infrastructure around leveraging your business with these tools. I mean, it's a very smart move. Clearly, both of these two companies, I'm sure others in the industry are working towards this just because of the lock-in that probably comes along with that.

17:41It's very organized. It also plays, at least as far as my awareness of Anthropik and my use of CloudCo work, and I'm starting to dabble a little bit in CloudCo and get really comfortable with their tools. Anthropic has done a really good job at how it's leaning into its presence in the enterprise and offering tools that are really appealing to businesses. I think it's a real core company strength for them right now. And so this feels like it's dialing directly into that. I think it's a smart move for them. But like you said, OpenAI doing this as well. OpenAI potentially playing a little bit of catch up here to try and kind of like be where Anthropic is because Anthropic is doing so much right now in the enterprise.

18:29But it speaks to maybe a larger need for these companies or desire for these companies to just have solutions that they can bring in house and take care of business right from the onset. Absolutely. When you think about what the promise of AI is, AI can literally do everything. So when When you see one big company do something, you're going to see the other big company say, oh, we should be doing that, too. I think that's exactly what's kind of happening here. Yeah, indeed. Very interesting stuff there. Also interesting for those of you like Rob and I who might be Gen X or maybe we're just, you know, on the Internet back when the Internet was a new thing.

19:10Internetrelicask.com. That's the search engine that you may remember once was known as Ask Jeeves has shut down after, quote, 25 years of answering the world's questions. If you go to their website, they've got a little write up. The site first launched in 1996 as a natural language question answering engine, as opposed to what we were largely seeing at the time, which was kind of keyword based search. Right. Company went public in 99 in the midst of the dot com boom. Boom. I was living in San Francisco about that time. Crazy, crazy time competing with Google search, competing with Yahoo, which was a real big deal.

19:46Then historically, as we know, Google overshadowed the service and pretty much all search for the most part. That led to holding company IAC acquiring Ask Jeeves. That happened in 2005. And then they promptly dropped the Jeeves branding. So they got rid of Jeeves, which was too bad because he was he was a very nice butler, but he just had to go. So Google continued to tighten its grip on the search market. That meant that IAC eventually had to pivot ask away from full search and toward other experiences. And now, as of May 1st, just a couple of days ago, if you go to ask.com, you're going to see it's closed.

20:27The site itself says Jeeves spirit endures, but it's gone. Are you sad? Oh, the days of services like Axe Jeeves and memes like Hamster Dance and Pets.com and all the good stuff in the late 90s. And, you know, for folks who are not old enough to remember who just weren't into the Internet, you know, back then, Axe Jeeves was was really cool because it was like this is when, you know, Google was just getting started. It hadn't dominated yet, but, you know, it really was. You had Yahoo, you had AltaVista and you had Axe Jeeves. It's like this is one of the major search engines. And it was just cool because like they basically put a butler with a cool monocle and all the good stuff.

21:10So they had the monocle. No one else had the monocle. They had the monocle. Yeah, I have very, very fond memories of, I don't know, pushing 30 years ago using Ash D's. But it's been a minute. So, yeah, so we'll have to pour one out for them. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things here that I'm fascinated by this overall story of Ask Jeeves about. Number one, back when it was Ask Jeeves, it truly was different because largely what we were seeing with Google and Yahoo and everything was you had to kind of understand how search engines worked from a keyword perspective in order to get the most out of them.

21:48Ask Jeeves kind of touted itself as, no, you don't know how to like know how to use our search engine. You just got to know how to ask a question. Like, what is the thing you want? Ask the question. And that's interesting now in the year 2026, because we do this all the time with chatbots, right? Like chatbots have taken this like initial concept of what Ask Jeeves was, whether anyone making the chatbots today thought directly of Ask Jeeves. But that's essentially what it was. Right. But it was just it was done very, very differently, clearly not done with artificial intelligence and large language models the way we use them now.

22:26But this is a concept that when you put it into the context of Ask Jeeves and ask.com was around nearly the beginning of the Internet. And we're only now starting to get to the point to where that concept really does kind of what they were going after then. because i do remember using it and and posing questions and stuff and didn't always get it right sometimes you know sometimes it's like okay i'm not really getting what i'm looking for but when it did it was like oh that's that's cool i don't have to think about it i just ask a question the way i would my my you know my wife or whatever you know you just ask a human yeah and i won't say the beginning of the internet it had been around for 30 years already but it was the beginning of the web it's when it's when www stuff yeah started getting really popular and you know we don't really even think about it but you but you you mentioned this ask jeez you could go and say how do i install a sump pump and get an answer whereas before for folks who are like said who are young or they didn't know how you had to search for things back then you had to know how to do a search when you were going to yahoo when you were going to the early days of google you weren't searching for answers you were searching for websites yeah ask jeez kind of made it different to where note what do you want to know let us figure out all the stuff on the back end now You cannot compare what XG's was, what X.com was to what the LLMs today are.

23:46That's a whole different thing. But the way you ask a question to get an answer, not necessarily a website, was kind of it was a novel thing. Because back then, when we were using those old search engines, we were trying to find websites so we could go do our own research. It wasn't about exposing the information in the sidebar or anything like that. And G's wasn't necessarily doing that. And it was returning websites as well, but it kind of showed you where to go in the website to get the information that you actually asked it for, which was something different than everything else at the time.

24:17So so like I said, I have very, very fond memories of my time using it in the in the in the late 90s and maybe into the early 2000s. And then Google, as they did with search, they just completely took it over when they opened it. Yeah, like a little bug.

24:36Well, thanks to R.W. Nash and the subreddit for this one. Bloomberg wrote in its SoundBite newsletter about the rise of pod slop and how the open source tracker podcast index is estimating that 39 percent of around 10 ,871 new podcast feeds created over nine days were likely generated by a high. That kind of sucks. The article highlights Inception Point AI. This is the podcast publisher that runs its business on Gen. AI podcast with more than 10 ,000 active shows and has pushed out 877 new shows in a single 48 hour period. Can you say slop? Bloomberg points to an increase in an AI generated podcast products coming from companies like Amazon.

25:17With this new podcast, it helps with product information on his site and creators like Adam Levy, who is producing around 120 episodes per month covering the Epstein files. It's good read on how rapidly this field is developing and what it means for old school podcasts. Well, like Daily Tech News Show, like the podcast that you and I have been doing for so very, very long. Yeah. You know, when I read this, you know, mind you, this is not like hardcore news. This is just like a newsletter that that noticed these details and kind of, you know, kind of put them together. I just found it really interesting, especially because over this weekend, I think I saw your post, Rob, on threads about saturation in podcasts.

25:56And I think your point there was like, why do we consider podcasts to be an overly saturated market? We don't do that when it comes to books. We don't do that when it comes to art. Why do we do that when it comes to podcasts? I'm curious because I agree with that. I do still think that there's opportunity, although you get lost in the saturation. That, I think, is the challenge. With new voices coming in, how do they get noticed, discovered, that whole thing? That's a real challenge. But I'm curious to know, in light of 10 ,871 new podcast feeds created over nine days by AI, does that kind of change your perception or change your opinion on the saturation point in podcasts?

26:39No, it doesn't. Because here's the thing. I've listened to these to write about them. These shows are horrendous. They are they are really, really bad. Here's the thing. I have to be honest and report the honest truth. They're so much better six months later than they were six months ago. They're getting better. They will get better. They will continue. So with the business plan of these companies and if you remember when when websites were doing it like Mahalo, they were just let's just throw whatever we can throw with the let's just throw whatever we can at the wall. And as long as someone listens to it, we're going to make money.

27:12So it doesn't matter if we can put out, you know, a thousand new podcast episodes over a weekend. It doesn't matter that we have thousands of people listening to each one. Can we get a dozen people listening to each one? Because if we can, then the exercise actually was caught cash positive for us. And that's what this is. So to me, much of this is just slop. It's not is not good yet. But like where I'm concerned is that it is actually getting better. And there's going to we're going to get to a point where people are going to just say, I just want the information. And if it's if this is passable and I can listen to it, it gives me the information I'm looking for.

27:48Then this is how I will consume the information. So how this is going to affect the industry. I'm not certain. There are stories out today about how Instagram is allowing you to say that, hey, I am a real person. I'm not a I. It's not something that you have to do. It's not something they're maintaining that you do. But I do believe that there are people generally want authenticity. So it's a scale of I want authenticity that costs more or I want AI stuff that costs less. And does the AI stuff give me the information I was looking for that, you know, does that work for me? I don't I know how I feel.

28:24I don't know where we're going to end up. But I can honestly tell you this stuff is way better than it was six months ago. Like a year ago, it was it was just trash. Six months ago, it's like, oh, that actually worked as a podcast. today it's like it still is not good as you and i doing what we're doing but if someone just wants the information they might be able to get it from you know from one of these type of shows and like i said for the the companies that are behind it it is just a a money play for them can we put the content out for less than when it you know you know for less than what we make on it if people actually do listen yeah well i agree with pretty much everything that you said you know the human content carries, I think, a premium as we move forward.

29:08At the same time, one of the strengths of podcasting since the beginning has been the niche down quality of, you know, I like this very particular thing. And somewhere out there in the world is someone doing a podcast on this very particular thing. And the Gen AI podcast thing, I think, opens up a door where you can get so incredibly specific and niche because, you know, at a certain point, I envision people are just kind of creating their own. I mean, you can do that now with like notebook LM or whatever, but maybe that becomes a platform, something so easy to be like, this is this very, very, very specific thing that I want to hear every week.

29:44And as the quality improves, you know, that's, that's tickling the funny bone that I'm specifically looking for. Okay, I will do that because I'm so engaged with that, that idea. It's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out as it gets better and better. Well folks, we do live streams here at Daily Tech News Show. We do them. So if you want to catch one, become a subscriber by heading over to youtube.com forward slash Daily Tech News Show.

30:19Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

31:01Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

31:31And now some quick headlines that are just good to know might make you look smarter in the future. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with the Special Competitive Studies Project that U.S. export controls have driven the company's share of AI accelerators in China to effectively zero. He says that Washington's policy has largely backfired, pushing Chinese firms to build and level up their own chips and software instead. Mm hmm. Kind of surprising. Amazon is turning its in-house logistics network into a paid. And this is what it's called. Amazon supply chain services platform for outside companies, putting it in direct competition with UPS and FedEx two to five day delivery times.

32:16interesting instagram is testing an optional ai creator profile level that creators can turn on as disclosure for their post and reels though meta is not requiring the tag for now i want to give a thank you to cw in the subreddit for the heads up on this one notepad plus plus creator don ho is warning that an unauthorized project using the notepad plus plus name and touting its quote official mac os version is indeed fake not at all affiliated with this project in any way this comes after many sites had apparently been reporting that the windows pc only application was finally being brought to mac jason if there's one thing we know scammers are going to scam grifters are going to grift yep that's just that's just unfortunately the way the world dgi which controls around 80 percent of the drone market globally can no longer sell its drones in Beijing as of May 1st.

33:12That's on top of the FCC's ban from last December in the U.S. This is kind of huge. Beijing's not a small place. I think it's like 23 to 25 million people in just that one city. And there are other cities that may do the same thing in China with this. Yeah, keeps closing down for DJI. China's state council shared a report about a Chinese court ruling that bars employers in the country from firing workers just because AI can now do their jobs. And by the way, the news was shared one day before the annual Labor Day holiday in that country that celebrates workers. So there you go. Men has acquired Assured Robot Intelligence, a startup whose AI helps robots understand and adapt to people as a building block for its new humanoid technology effort.

33:58We will certainly see where that leads. And finally, OpenAI added an optional animated pet to its Codex coding app that floats as an overlay to show what Codex is doing it'll notify the user about task status that sort of stuff and then prompts when input is needed from the user so yes effectively open ai has its own clippy that's just the way it is everybody has their own clippy they they all have to learn the lesson the hard way we end every episode of dtns with some shared perspectives and today andrew from colorado relates his experience with gemini in his car andrew writes last night i was stuck in traffic due to event-based road closures in an unfamiliar city trying to get to my hotel while stop i activated the gemini voice assistant to ask why it took at least three redirect prompts for the assistant to stop guessing and go do a search but hearing you all talk about google's rollout the cars reminded me that the conversational nature of these ai tools isn't actually human conversational style i asked a tool a research type question why are so many roads closed around me tonight it got the context right of where i was where i was but it started responding immediately with an assumption if i were talking to a human i'd expect a i don't know let me check and then a period of silence followed by a good answer instead i kept having to say no and redirect it to finally find the information which is both frustrating and distracting if google is just rolling out gemini live which is the default talkback experience on the phone i suspect my experience will be what a lot of drivers have at least until the next model release yeah that that is something that happens sometimes when you query an llm you know like the voice query like i've got this question blah blah and it wants so bad to like please you so it comes back with something immediately and you're like no no it's cool take your time because i want the answer not a answer yeah there's you know jim and i just did some updates i want to say like last wednesday so the prompting inside of like google docs and stuff like that is a little different and just the friction of I now have to ask the question a little bit of a different way upsets me.

36:06So it's like I have to figure out how do I actually massage this thing to give me the answers that I want as compared to give me the answers it thinks I want. That is a big problem with LNMs because they're not people. They're just ones and zeros that are really, really cool in the way that they effectively put those ones and zeros in front of your eyeballs. Indeed, indeed. Well, folks, we want to know what you're thinking about. So if you've got some insights into a story, share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Indeed, indeed. Huge thank you to Andrew for contributing to today's show.

36:36And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron. That's patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll see you tomorrow.

36:53The DTNS family of podcasts Helping each other understand Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker

37:06Parles-tu français? Hablas espagnol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

37:48Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.