Gold-plated Cat Vomit - DTNS 5116

0:03Dr Niki: This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October 1st, 2025. We tell you what you need to know. We follow up on context and gosh darn it, we just try to help each other understand.

0:14Sarah Lane: Today, Dr. Niki is going to tell us about gold-plated cat vomit. Yes, you heard that right. And Google's custom Gemini attempts to outdo Amazon for your smart home.

0:23Dr Niki: I mean, who says we don't try to tell you everything, right? I'm Tom Merritt.

0:29Sarah Lane: And I'm Sarah Lane.

0:30Dr Niki: Let's start with what you need to know with that big story, not the catwalk. The day after Amazon announced new smart home products, Google unveiled two new cameras, a new doorbell, and a new smart speaker of its own. It also revamped the Home app and announced that Gemini is replacing Google Assistant for the home. So now they mean it this time, Gemini will be the name of the thing you talk to.

0:56Sarah Lane: I mean, if only Google changed names often.

1:01Dr Niki: Yeah, yeah. But this time it's going to stick. Let's talk about the hardware. The Nest Cam Indoor is available now for$100. The Nest Cam Outdoor is available for$150. Both of those have a wider field of view than previous Nest Cams, 152 degrees. There's also a third-gen Nest Doorbell available for$180. That also has a wider field of view than previous Nest doorbells, 166 degrees. And all three of these do 2K video. Now, you may have noticed Amazon announced some 4K video cameras yesterday. Google says we think 2K is good enough with bandwidth constraints, so it won't overdo it. Your mileage may vary, but you're getting 2K with these.

1:42Dr Niki: They also record in HDR. They promise better low-light performance, meaning you'll see color images longer before it switches to infrared in the dark. You can access six hours of event history with 10 second clips of triggered recordings for free. Don't have to pay anything out of the box. You get that. If you pay for Google Home Advanced, which is 20 bucks a month, you'll get 60 days of clips and 10 days of 24 seven recording. There's also a middle ground 30 day event history option that is$10 a month. They also announced the Google Home Speaker, although that one's not coming until spring of next year for 99 bucks.

2:19Dr Niki: It'll play sound in all directions, has a light ring to indicate when it's listening and responding. Probably doesn't compare all that favorably to the Amazon Echoes we saw yesterday, which is why they were focusing on the cameras, I suppose. And along with this, Walmart is releasing new versions of It's On, O-N-N, not capitalized, just to mess with us, indoor camera. The indoor camera wired is$22.96. cents. Video doorbell wired is$49 and 86 cents. Those are both Gemini for home capable though, as well as 10 ADP. And that Google home app got a redesign. I haven't seen it show up for me yet, either on my pixel or my iPhone.

3:01Dr Niki: But when I do, I will get a faster, less crashing app, they promise. And three tabs. That's how I know I'll get the new one. If I have home, activity and automations, which that's pretty self-explanatory, right? You're like, you see your home stuff. You see what has happened on the home in the activity tab and then automations where you can make it do stuff. There are new resolutions on those cameras now. So you'll be able to zoom in and crop images in the home app. And then of course, the big thing that really this was all about was Gemini for home, which is an early access. So you have to request it.

3:38Dr Niki: But if you get that, you can use natural language to control your smart home devices. So it'll understand context. Like, I want to cook, turn on the lights. It'll know, oh, he wants the lights on in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of nice, right? Instead of having to think like, please turn on the kitchen lights. You can also say, turn off every light except the bedroom, right? And it'll understand like, oh, okay, I'll leave the bedroom lights on, that kind of stuff. Also, notifications can be more detailed. So instead of just motion detected, it'll say something like, a delivery person left a package or, oh, don't worry, it was just a cat.

4:16Dr Niki: It'll probably just say a cat passed by, but it'll use natural language to describe what it saw. Some of these features are only available with certain subscription plans, but at the top level, you can ask it things like, what happened to the couch? And it'll then show you a video of your dog helpfully rearranging your pillows and blankets for you.

4:36Sarah Lane: I was like, what happened to the, I don't know what happened

4:39Dr Niki: to the couch oh it was the dog yeah that was the scenario that came to my mind is walking in and go what happened to the couch and then google being like oh here's a video of seven uh messing around with the couch uh there's also a home brief feature that can just summarize all your notifications like if you've been gone for the day and you see this wall of notifications you could summarize it

4:58Sarah Lane: all cat cat went by dog uh screwed up the couch yeah and your kitchen lights uh are on uh that

5:06Dr Niki: That package was from UPS. The intelligent alerts and the ability to talk to Gemini Live, which by the way, we didn't talk about this, but you can also have it do travel planning or whatever else you do with Gemini you can do here too. That all comes in the$10 a month subscription. more advanced features like searching your video history with plain text, those event descriptions and the daily summaries, and the more descriptive alerts in notifications are only for the Google home advanced subscription. That one's 20 bucks a month. However, if you do subscribe, you can then use Gemini on your older devices.

5:43Dr Niki: In fact, because it's cloud-based, it goes all the way back to the Google home max from 2017. Again, you need to opt in to get access to this stuff, at least for the moment.

5:51Sarah Lane: Well, I think the subscription model is very much upon us. It has been for a while, but not going anywhere. And I know you and Jason talked about the Amazon announcements from yesterday. How do you compare the two?

6:09Dr Niki: I feel like Amazon very much has the edge in the talk to your home version of this, but they didn't really lean into the camera stuff as well. They had updated cameras and they do some nice stuff. But Google's big advantage is in Gemini. Gemini is much more capable right now than Amazon's voice assistant, even if you opt into the plus version. And I think Google was flexing its muscles there to show that off. It's unfortunate that they don't have the easy entry point to talk to your house the way Amazon does. Because the Echoes are very impressive to me. Whereas the new Google Home smart speaker is not coming until next year, and they didn't even give us a date.

6:51Dr Niki: So I sort of wish I could take Gemini and put it in the Echo devices, frankly.

6:56Sarah Lane: A lot of this does feel like marketing to me. Gemini for Home is Google Home's new fancy thing, even though it's, I mean, and obviously, as you mentioned, some pretty great upgrades, but the Google Home situation, you mentioned, you know, your Pixel device and your iPhone, you know, talking to Google Home at home. A lot of people are like, you can use that with an iPhone? I think Google has suffered a little bit from people not understanding that, yes, it's an alternative to Amazon's assistants or HomeKit.

7:36Dr Niki: Yeah, I think people understand Nest more than Google, which is why they've kept the Nest brand around because lots of people have Nest thermostats. Probably more people have Nest cameras, but fewer people, I shouldn't say very few, but fewer people have the Google Home speakers. And that's playing out. They are leaning into their strengths here, which is like, We know you love the cameras. Didn't get a new thermostat this time, but we know you love the cameras, so we're leaning into that. I think people think Ring when they think of doorbells, which is an Amazon product. They seem to be more popular.

8:12Dr Niki: But these Google doorbell, especially because they give you so much cloud-based access without having to pay a subscription, even if it's limited, versus Ring, which gives you practically nothing if you don't pay for the subscription. I think they could make some headway there. But yeah, and lurking behind all of this is the fact that matter is expanding as a protocol that means you don't have to think about whether you have a Nest device or a ring doorbell or something. You can just control it with whatever system you're using.

8:45Sarah Lane: Can we talk about the ONN naming convention? It just looks like a typo. It looks like a typo. You know, whatever. Maybe it'll catch on.

8:57Dr Niki: That was the one that I very much are like, yeah, that's totally marketing because they want you to talk about it and then have to think about it. And that makes you remember. Which we are.

9:05Sarah Lane: So, you know, well done, Google.

9:07Dr Niki: Yeah. Good for you, Walmart.

9:10Sarah Lane: Well, DT &S is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Michelle Serju, Kirk Stephenson, Miranda Janelle, and we have a new patron, Eddie. Hey!

9:22Dr Niki: Hey, welcome, Eddie. Eddie is the best.

9:25Sarah Lane: A few different gaming notes for you today. Let's start with Sony, which updated its PlayStation 5 digital console in Europe. Still costs 499 euros, but has an 825 gigabyte solid state drive instead of one terabyte. Shrinkflation. It also has a matte finish and is 100 grams lighter. So, you know, might work for you. Microsoft raised the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from$20 per month to$30 per month. That might be a hit for some of you. But for the cost, you get 400 more titles and unlimited cloud gaming at 1440p. Cloud gaming is no longer in beta either. Ubisoft Plus Classics is now part of Game Pass Ultimate, and Fortnite Crew will be part of the service starting November 18th.

10:16Sarah Lane: The less expensive plans also get Unlimited Cloud and more titles. Not to be left out, Amazon's Luna Game streaming service added Game Night, a collection of social party games that you can play with friends on your phone. It includes 25 titles like Exploding Kittens, Ticket to Riot, and more.

10:36Dr Niki: You know, I've been in the situation where everybody was trying to play Jackbox or something and you had to have a console involved and it was kind of a pain. So I can see this being something that is compelling. It's just you got to have everybody on Amazon Luna, I guess, to really make it work. And I'm not sure how many times that's going to happen. But I kind of forgot Luna was around. So good for them getting their name back in the news today.

11:05Sarah Lane: You know, for everybody who has lots of game nights, I can imagine you being like, oh, no, this is super fun. I don't do that very often. So it's probably, you know, I'm not the target audience here. But yeah, if anybody has thoughts on playing Exploding Kittens on mobile, let us know.

11:24Dr Niki: I bet they have more thoughts on the raise in the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. But Microsoft did a smart thing by saying we're going to put in Ubisoft Plus Classics. You're going to get Fortnite Crew, which gives you in-game currency, trying to say, yes, you're paying more, but you're getting more in return.

11:39Sarah Lane: $10 is a big price hike. It is.

11:43Dr Niki: 50 % price hike, right?

11:44Sarah Lane: Indeed. So yes, it's like, yes, Microsoft is giving you more. But at the same time, you're going to get a lot of people grumbling like, well, I didn't want more. You know, I wanted to pay$20, not$30.

11:55Dr Niki: Well, and they did not raise the price of the lower levels, but also added unlimited gaming and more titles there. So I guess that would be Microsoft answer is like, well, then pay for the cheaper one if you don't want more. The UK Information Commissioner's office said Tuesday that it had reached provisional findings In its investigation of Media Lab AI's operation of Imgur, the ICO indicated it would fine the company for how it handled the data of minors, or mishandled, I guess. Imgur is now unavailable to users identified as using a UK IP address. No comment from Imgur or Media Lab on exactly why, but it is certainly related to this in some way.

12:34Dr Niki: Also going on in the UK, the Financial Times reports that the UK Home Office has sent a second technical capability notice to Apple requiring, once again, that it build access to iCloud data for official access to encrypted cloud backups of British citizens when legally required. In other words, we need you to make a backdoor in encryption. Apple received a previous notice in January and at that point ended its advanced data protection service in the UK. That notice was withdrawn, however. after a court declined to make the proceedings secret and the U.S. government negotiated an end to the request.

13:12Dr Niki: It's unknown yet how this new request differs, at least to the public.

13:18Sarah Lane: Yeah, it's kind of hard to follow this, to be honest. So many moving parts.

13:24Dr Niki: Well, let me make it simple. The U.K. government said we want a backdoor in January. Apple resisted. the court said, you can't keep it secret. The US put pressure and the UK stopped it. Now they're trying again, but we don't know what's different this time.

13:37Sarah Lane: Yeah. I can only imagine Apple will come out swinging as they do. And yeah, for anybody who is affected in the UK, that's really what I'm always most curious about. It's like, how does this affect somebody who lives in a different region than I do? How does this affect the way that you use Apple products and services?

14:04Dr Niki: Yeah. Nate Langston from Bloomberg, who's occasionally a guest on DTNS, was saying that he actually removed advanced data protection ahead of time just to be safe.

14:16Sarah Lane: Epic Games says that after Apple made a change to warnings for third-party apps and app stores, users were more likely to install the Epic Games Store in the EU. Prior to iOS 18.6, which was released this summer, Apple had multiple warnings when EU users attempted to install third-party apps and stores. The EU required Apple to support, and continues to, to support third-party installations and warned Apple not to make the process too difficult. After the summer update, there was only one warning that certain features, like subscription management, would not be available through Apple, and that the third party would handle all user data.

14:59Sarah Lane: Prior to that update, 65 % of people attempting to install the Epic Games stores stopped. After the update, only 25 % stopped.

15:09Dr Niki: Yeah, you warn them fewer times, they get warned off less. It's kind of, you know, Epic is waving this around like it's, you know, a smoking gun. I don't think anybody's surprised by it, but sure, they've got a point. Like Apple's multiple warnings in the past had a bigger effect on their ability to install Epic Games stuff. So there you go. Economists at Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution published a study of the effects of generative models like ChatGPT on the job market in the US. Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at Brookings who co-authored the research, told the Financial Times, despite how quickly AI technology has progressed, the labor market over the past three years has been a story of continuity over change.

15:53Dr Niki: We are not in an economy-wide jobs apocalypse right now. It's mostly stable. Now, there are job losses if you're like, well, hold on. It doesn't feel stable to me. the unemployment rate for new graduates with a bachelor's degree doubled from 4.4 % in April to 9.3 % in August. But the mix of the types of jobs offered didn't change. And so what the economists are saying is that indicates it's not a collapse in types of jobs, which is what you would see if AI was replacing jobs. It's that the economics just aren't there, that companies are cutting back. In fact, the changes are similar to the changes that came with the rise of computers and the internet.

16:33Dr Niki: There's a graph that maps it out. Yale University Budget Lab does intend to update these numbers monthly to see if that changes in the future.

16:41Sarah Lane: This always reminds me of the, you know, nobody's alive anymore, but the people who are like, photography is ruining art.

16:49Dr Niki: Yes, right.

16:50Sarah Lane: You know, like, like, people were artists, and now we just take pictures? Yeah, all those artists are out of jobs now.

16:58Dr Niki: Right.

16:59Sarah Lane: Why not both? So yeah, this is an ongoing issue. And of course, it depends on the company that you work for, or the services of a company that you're using. But this does feel mostly like, okay, unemployment rates may be rising. AI may have a lot to do with that. But that's in very niche scenarios. Yeah.

17:28Dr Niki: And what they're saying is it doesn't look like AI has much to do with it, that the companies are overestimating their own changes when they say they're getting rid of jobs because of AI. These economists are saying it sure doesn't look like it. It looks like you're offering the same kinds of jobs. You're just offering fewer of them because you're not making as much money. That's a different thing than AI eliminating jobs.

17:48Sarah Lane: Yeah, exactly. And I think for many folks who have been asked to incorporate AI into their jobs. And we've talked about this on previous shows. It's like, it doesn't always work. It's more hassle than it is keeping things pushing.

18:11Dr Niki: Unless it's implemented correctly. And that's the problem is you've got some bosses out there saying, just use AI. And people are like, okay, I guess I use AI. And they're using it for things that it's not good for.

18:21Sarah Lane: Yeah. Starting December 16th, Meta will start using the text of conversations that you have with its chatbots to inform which ads and content you receive. Conversations involving religious or political views, sexual orientation, health, and racial or ethnic origin won't be used to customize ads or content. It also won't apply to users in the EU, south korea or the uk i'm not shocked not shocked at all yeah uh there's no way to opt out unless

18:53Dr Niki: you're in the eu south korea or the uk but yeah uh not not super surprised so i i don't i tom do you use meta ai i don't i don't either if i use it it's in instagram like i will very rarely use it in instagram uh but lots of people are but lots of people are using it in facebook yeah no no no

19:12Sarah Lane: No, it's true. I mean, standalone app, and obviously there's a web version as well. I don't have a problem with chatbots being like, okay, I know what Sarah wants to talk about. She likes dogs. She likes shoes, etc., etc. So that is a huge issue. I think Meta is being safe and probably smart by keeping things like religion and politics out of the mix. um you know and other stuff um and obviously the eu south korea and the uk are just they're like they just have laws yeah we're just we're not going to be involved in this at all yeah uh

19:55Dr Niki: all right let's talk about uh open ai signing a letter of intent on wednesday to buy memory chips from samsung and sk hynix uh to help it build out its data centers so now we know where the memory is coming from the people who make a lot of memory. Also signed a deal with SK Telecom to explore building one of those data centers in the southwest part of South Korea, probably down there near Gwangju. OpenAI also officially launched Sora 2. It's a video creation tool that can make up to 10 seconds of video from a text prompt. That's two more seconds than VO3. Take that. Yeah, we're getting there.

20:30Dr Niki: It's available to all ChatGPT users in Canada and the US, free or paid. If you're at that$200 a month tier, you get an advanced pro version of it. There's also an iOS app called Sora that lets you scan what they call a cameo of yourself into the app. And then you can use that to create yourself in the videos and that of your friends who have given you permission to use them and then share those creations with each other.

21:00Sarah Lane: Listen, I...

21:01Dr Niki: I, that was the pregnantest pause I've heard in a long time.

21:06Sarah Lane: Uh, so, you know, talking video creation tools, uh, and you know, we, we've been talking about these for a while and they're, they're, you know, it's short stuff. So 10 seconds of something that I could be very creative with and share with my friends. Don't hate it. Sounds fun. It also, to me, and maybe I'm just sort of missing the point. It's like, okay, if you're going to be an internet influencer, then maybe this would be something that you could use to build your brand or whatever. But it's not a movie.

21:44Dr Niki: No, I think it's the opposite, honestly. I don't think this is about building your brand or being an influencer because I've been using this app since last night. It's more like a group chat ethos. It's like, oh, let me put Justin and Brian in a video where we're selling insurance. Ha, ha, ha. You know, it's for enthusiasts. That's kind of what I said when we talked about the early report that this was coming. It's for people who are like, I want to play around with this. I want to see what it can do. And I am not allowed to put the images of public figures that I don't have the rights to in it.

22:17Dr Niki: So let me put myself in. Let me put my friends in. And then it's more fun.

22:20Sarah Lane: Yeah. At a panel during the Zurich Film Festival, producer Aline van der Velden discussed AI actress Tilly Norwood. It's the first product from his talent studio, a spinoff from van der Velden's production studio, Particle 6. Van der Velden said they would announce which agency would represented in the next few months. SAG-AFTRA has issued a statement condemning Tilly Norwood, saying that the use of synthetic performers must comply with contractual obligations. Vander Veldin said Norwood, quote, is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work, a piece of art.

23:00Dr Niki: Yeah, this is a good way. We talked about this a lot on Cord Killers this week when I did that with Brian Brushwood. And I came to the understanding that this is a chance for Vander Veldin to get a bunch of people who don't understand how this works to fund him. you know, to buy services from him. Cause you can do that. You can do this stuff. Like we were just talking about making Sora to, uh, you know, create stuff. So, so yeah, like people can use existing tools from multiple services to do this. Uh, and Vander Veldin's just making use of marketing savvy, uh, to get people talking about it, to get SAG after to spread the word by protesting about it.

23:41Dr Niki: And it kind of reminds me of the legal case where they tried to get a copyright in the name of an AI. That really was a way to get attention. It really didn't have a whole lot of long-lasting effects.

23:54Sarah Lane: It's a very interesting conversation that Vander Vilden is having us talk about right now. If you have a synthetic actress, which is Tilly Nordwood in this case, You know, and maybe that actress, you know, is sort of beloved in some sort of film, you know, short film, TV show, whatever, whatever it is. And and then it's like, oh, OK, we want to see Tilly again. Yeah. And and, you know, so Tilly starts to become popular and, you know, as actors are and and it becomes a thing that then starts to generate money. I think that's where SAG-AFTRA is like, hold on a second. We need to be involved in this in some way.

24:42Sarah Lane: There's something wrong here.

24:43Dr Niki: Well, all SAG is saying is there is a contract that requires production studios to follow certain rules to do this. Make sure you follow them. But they also have a bunch of angry actors who are afraid of this, who think it's going to replace them. It's not. It's not going to replace them any more than animated characters replaced physical actors. Uh, I think there might be some fandoms built around the Tilly Norwoods of the future perhaps, but there's always going to be the need for that human connection.

25:14Sarah Lane: It's like, there's always been that it's like Mickey mouse, like, right. Like, are we mad that Mickey mouse was, uh, you know, a, a, a character that wasn't real. Right.

25:23Dr Niki: And transcends the person who voiced Mickey mouse over the years. Right. Nobody even really knows, thinks in their head who that is. uh also real quickly meta ray-ban display glasses uh now available those are the ones with a small video display in the corner uh you have to go to select stores you have to make an appointment and the appointments are pretty much unavailable so these things are at least more popular than the supply uh best buy lens crafters sunglass hut and ray-ban stores as well as the meta lab will take the appointments but when i looked just now uh i could get a meta lab appointment in late December and everything else was either just unavailable at all or booking in early January.

26:04Sarah Lane: I looked at this too. The nearest store to me of those is Best Buy and it was just like unavailable.

26:13Dr Niki: Yeah, they're just not there. All right. Finally, a few quick headlines that are just like we always say, good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Pay attention to these.

26:22Sarah Lane: Peloton raised its monthly subscription price. Oh, yes, it did. And announced a new cross-training series of hardware, including a$1 ,695 bike and a$6 ,695 tread plus, an AI-based Peloton IQ that can track your workouts across machines.

26:41Dr Niki: Wikimedia Deutschland announced the Wikidata Embedding Project that will support MCP, Model Context Protocol, and make Wikipedia's data easier to access for LLM inquiries.

26:55Sarah Lane: The government of Afghanistan began restoring some internet and telecom services after disconnecting fiber optic cables on purpose earlier this week and taking the entire country offline.

27:08Dr Niki: Windows 25 H2 now generally available for installation by Windows 11 users. There are two known issues affecting digital video playback and updating from a shared folder. Those are the essentials for today, but Dr. Nikki has cat vomit for you.

27:24Sarah Lane: If your cat or dog has coughed up a hairball recently, then you and I have something in common, and it may have been for science. Dr. Nikki is going to explain. Dr.

27:37Dr Niki: Nikki, welcome back.

27:39Tom Merritt: Hello. Happy to be here, Tom. So excited I could throw up.

27:42Dr Niki: I know. And that's a good thing in this case. This study is very dear to my heart that we're going to talk about because I have often wondered and even got into discussions, almost arguments with other pet owners about my dog eating grass. Why do cats and dogs eat grass?

28:02Tom Merritt: Wouldn't we like to know? Actually, we're not the only ones who like to know. There is a publication from the Journal of Veterinary Behavior that came out recently exploring why they just eat grass and then immediately throw it up later once they get inside the house.

28:15Dr Niki: Yeah. Especially waiting until they're on the rug.

28:19Tom Merritt: Yeah, the new rug also.

28:22Dr Niki: The newer the rug, the more likely.

28:24Tom Merritt: So the authors state that they opportunistically collected six regurgitated masses from their own two cats, which is a great study specimen if you ask me.

28:35Dr Niki: Locally harvested, got it.

28:36Tom Merritt: Yeah, they dried these masses and mounted them on slides and they coated them in a fine dusting of gold. this is a technique that is done to prepare samples for imaging on a scanning electron

28:50Dr Niki: microscope so when we talk about gold plated hairballs it's for scanning electron purposes it's for science yes it is not is not to preserve them you know in in a way and so well not not as an award or something but to preserve them for the for the investigation uh how does that work How does the scanning electron microscope work?

29:12Tom Merritt: Yeah, so I think as someone who uses microscopes a lot, I feel like the SEM is like the Rolls-Royce of microscopes. It's been around for a while, but these are the ones that give you those really cool, super zoomed in 3D images that you may have seen of like a butterfly's wing scales. Yeah, yeah. So you do need to coat your sample in gold. And the way that this works is, in this case, it's a 15 kilovote electron beam that's pointed at the sample, very small piece of sample. And we're trying to figure out like the topography of its surface. And what happens is there's an interaction between the sample and the electrons from the beam that kind of get dispersed around it and picked up by a detector that's sitting behind the sample.

29:58Tom Merritt: And then this gets translated by the computer into a high-resolution 3D images that lets you see really, really fine detail of the sample's topography.

30:07Dr Niki: Okay. So it's interpreting how the electrons land, so to speak, in order to reconstruct what the electron hit.

30:16Tom Merritt: It's kind of a very more complicated way of thinking about how x-rays work.

30:21Dr Niki: Yeah, okay.

30:22Tom Merritt: Except it doesn't go through the sample. It goes around it.

30:24Dr Niki: Yeah, bounces around. Okay. Yeah. All right. So let's put the cat barf in the SEM. What do we find?

30:32Tom Merritt: So why did they put cat barf in SEM? They were trying to figure out. I really like the way that they thought about this. They're like, okay, why do cats barf? If we maybe look at the microscopic structure of the barf, maybe we could see if something specific is going on. So what the scan showed is that the plants that the cat ingested had microstructures with a lot of serrations, spikes and hooks that almost kind of looked Velcro-y, and that they were snagged up with all the cat hairs and entangled. So they think that the theory up till then was that these plants basically go in like a drain snake and kind of capture all the hairs in their digestive system and pull them out and through so that the hairs don't stay inside their system.

31:18Dr Niki: Is it a particular plant that works best?

31:22Tom Merritt: Funnily enough, another overly enthusiastic technique was applied to the BARF. they did DNA analysis of the different plants and they did found find that it was multiple species of plants that were used the authors didn't quite go into the this but what I found really interesting is that they noted that cats will sometimes and I think dogs do this similarly as well yeah but they'll like rub their face on the plants before they eat them and one theory is that they're using their whiskers to determine if they're like scratchy enough to be useful to help them like pass the hair through their intestinal system because whiskers are very very very they have very precise mechanoreceptors and so they can they can probably feel these microstructures on

32:06Dr Niki: the plants which is really cool now i i know cats always cough up a hairball but a lot of times with dogs that it just seems like it's the the grass again but there's probably more in there that you need a sem to be able to tell yeah so it's the theory and this helps that theory and again they

32:23Tom Merritt: only used two cats for this so maybe it's different with dogs but that it just helps clear things out and it could be a piece of kibble from earlier that got stuck in there or just bile i have to

32:34Dr Niki: say my puppy who's now a year and a half uh coughed up a lot more of this stuff and ate a lot more grass when it was a puppy because when you're a puppy you at least our puppy in this case just ate everything right yeah it's just like let me swallow it and see if it's good uh thankfully never yet has swallowed a rock, but definitely coughed up bark and things that now he has learned not to eat. So this makes perfect sense to me that he, yeah, he goes and rubs his face. Testing the water. Yeah, yeah. Eats the grass. Usually when I have discussions with other pet owners, it's about like, well, I don't want them to eat the stuff that's on the grass.

33:10Dr Niki: And that makes sense to me. But if the grass is untouched by pesticides or anything else, it's probably okay.

33:15Tom Merritt: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm assuming this is kind of an instinctual process, and they may not be able to regulate doing it too much in the case they're like, I should do this. Yeah, that's true. But they barf up nothing. They're just like, I should do this once in a while, and they might get excited and eat too much. But insight into this behavior I thought was actually more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

33:34Dr Niki: Yeah, and –

33:34Tom Merritt: Gold-plated cat bar.

33:36Dr Niki: Involved gold, dust, and a scanning electron microscope.

33:39Tom Merritt: Which can always only go well.

33:42Dr Niki: Well, Dr. Nicky, thank you so much. if people want to support you so you can buy enough gold dust to do these on your own where

33:48Tom Merritt: should they go yeah if you want to learn more about cat barf uh just go to my website nicole akramans.com i'll post this story there and my handle is the same as my website on blue sky fantastic thanks dr dickie bye the more you know i mean i could tell you a lot about cat barf

34:09Dr Niki: and now i learned a lot about cat barf just now but i certainly i certainly have a lot of

34:15Sarah Lane: experience with it um and you know like you were talking about seven um rex my new dog uh it has not barfed yet um he's done a lot of other things wrong but uh but yeah we'll see one of these days he doesn't he doesn't seem to be a dog that is you know looking to just eat scraps on the ground which my former dog Otis very much was with disastrous results.

34:42Dr Niki: Well, now we know why at least. Folks, if you would like to watch us live, we don't do this show live, but we do do live streams. I'll do office hours live on YouTube. We have a hangout on Friday and Sarah and I are on DTNS live, a weekly show kind of looking at the week's tech news. You can catch all of that by becoming a subscriber at youtube.com slash daily tech news show.

35:09Sarah Lane: We like to end every episode of DTNS here with some shared thoughts. Today, Tim has some kudos for us.

35:17Dr Niki: Yeah, Tim, the DBA from the Buzz Out Loud days wrote, over the three weeks running, your coverage of the introductory big story on the podcast has been excellent. You have had some episodes where the topic was deep and you had extensive coverage and discussions, while other episodes had less deep of a story and required less time to cover it well. Good on you for moderating the pacing to match the stories. Thanks. Well, thank you, Tim. That's nice of you to say.

35:42Sarah Lane: That is very nice. And thank you to Tom, because he's setting the tone for all of us here on DT &S.

35:49Dr Niki: Too much thanks, Tom.

35:52Sarah Lane: What are you thinking about? Did something pique your interest that we talked about today? If you have insight on a story, we want to hear from you. Share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

36:05Dr Niki: But two more thanks to Dr. Nikki and to Tim the DBA for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business. If you haven't already, become a patron. Get some extra content. Support the show. Feel good about giving back to the show that gives to you. Patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.