Google Fills Its New Smart Speaker with Gemini - DTNS 5292

0:00This 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. As a woman entrepreneur, you know that every connection counts, whether it's with your customers, your team, or your community.

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3:03This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and try to help each other understand. Today, Google is launching its first new smart speaker in six years, and it's full of Gemini. My God, it's full of Gemini. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. So yeah, Google finally announced the next version of a Google Home speaker. It was so long ago when they had the last one that they had decided they were calling things Nest, and then they changed their minds since then.

3:35So this is the Google Home speaker. They teased this last October. So it's actually, you know, been quite a bit since they teased it too, but not as long as since they had the Nest Audio. It's got a smaller form factor than the Nest Audio. Still has a knit fabric covering with that recycled material. And they moved the lights down to the base, ring of LEDs around the base. That'll tell you if the mic is on or if it's listening for you to talk or if it's responding based on the color and the pattern. There's also still a toggle switch for muting the mic. you got volume and pause play buttons on the top.

4:08This one, however, is not directional audio. It can do 360 degree audio and they say it has two and a half times the bass. For those who are all about that bass, you'll be very pleased. You can pair it with another home speaker for stereo audio and you can pair it with Google TV streamer. So you can use the speaker in your TV with it to provide stereo audio. Works with Matter. It is also a Thread 1.3 border router, which you would expect. And as Sarah said, it is full of Gemini instead of Google Assistant. So it can handle more natural language requests. And you can even ask it to do multiple things at once rather than having to stop and redo the hot word every time.

4:50It also will have better context to what you're saying, allowing you to do that multiple step request. Longer memory. So even when you're in between doing different requests. You don't have to keep saying the hot word. You can refer to things that you already asked it to do, and it should remember them. To get Gemini Live, which is a little better at all this stuff and includes better automation capabilities, as well as camera history search, you'll need to pay. So we'll do some basic stuff without you paying. But if you pay$10 a month for Google Home Premium, it'll be a little better. And if you want to pay$20 a month for Google Home Premium, which is the higher tier, you'll get something called a Home Brief Summary, which will tell you all the things that have been happening in your smart home since the last time you talked about it.

5:36The new Google Home is available for pre-order now for$100 shipping on June 25th. My first reaction to this was, I wonder how different this is from the Amazon Echo Studio, which you and I both have, Tom, because they sound pretty comparable. And sort of like we now have Alexa Plus. I'm whispering because I don't want to wake her up. And then we also have Gemini instead of Google Assistant, both just more capable models in general. It feels like sort of a one-to-one comparison. I wouldn't say I really need one of these Google speakers just because, I don't know, I'm not really, I've got a lot of speakers in my house right now.

6:21But I like the idea of doing a comparison between the two, because if you're in the Google ecosystem and Amazon is not how you've made your home smarter, then this is very attractive and it's cheaper. Yeah. Feature for feature, if you set aside the assistant part of it, these are pretty matched up. You might like the aesthetics of one better than the other. Maybe you like your LEDs down at the bottom instead of wrapped around the middle. but mostly they're the same. So yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Like if you're in the Google ecosystem and it can more easily look at your calendar and things like that, that might make the difference.

7:00Otherwise they're pretty, pretty close. Yeah, they are. It's a nice looking speaker. Might be a live with it segment in El Futuro. And a hundred dollars is a good price and they do bundle in a certain amount of months for free for their subscription. But I've seen several reviewers say, if you want to make the best use of this, it's going to be$10 a month. And that is something that is true of Amazon as well. But most people don't notice because if they have Amazon Prime for shipping, well, they're already paying for it, right? Well, exactly. It's like, it's not as if we're getting something for free at Amazon, but Amazon makes it easy to say, but I get all this other stuff too.

7:41Yeah, exactly. So yeah, being a Prime member, it's not for everybody, but it definitely has its perks. Well, one of the perks of doing the show is knowing that we have so many people directly supporting us, and we thank all of you. DTNS is made possible by you listening and watching right now. Thanks today to Mike Cortez, Bill Russell, Erwin Stirr, and Jonathan Wentz.

8:08This 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. Is your kid's birthday coming up? Don't stress the prep. The Party Shop at Michaels is your one-stop shop for everything from bluey to rodeo.

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10:03Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. Hi, it's Liv Perez from Let's Get Dressed, the podcast about amazing personal style and great buys for your wardrobe that actually work for everyday life. If you're looking for the perfect pair of shoes for spring and summer, I highly recommend checking out the Cruiser Collection from Rothy's. It's a range of super chic, colorful slip-on loafers and Mary Janes that are perfect for all of your spring and summer adventures. It's just that perfect shoe for when you want something chiquer than a sneaker, but more practical than a sandal.

10:35They're machine washable, too, and come in a ton of different colors. Discover the world of Rothy's at rothys.com. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S dot com. All right, there's more we need to know today. Let's get right into the briefs. Let's start with Qualcomm, which announced two new platforms on Tuesday. Snapdragon Reality Elite is made for mixed reality glasses to run more powerful models on the device. It's an improvement over the previous XR platform, especially with a claimed 160 % performance increase in the neural processing units. Qualcomm says it can run a 3 billion parameter language model at 45 tokens per second and enable better head and hand tracking.

11:16It's a smaller rise over the XR platform in resolution at a 4.4K per eye and 90 frames per second. It can offer the ability to layer content over a digital camera feed to blend digital imagery into your field of view for more realistic presentations. The other new platform is the Scalable Turnkey AI Ready Toolkit, or START, S-T-A-R-T, which is a combination of chip, software, and apps for devices, including smart glasses. Qualcomm is presenting this as a white-label toolkit, so any brand can put smart devices in their style. Eyewear manufacturers InSpecs and O 'Neill, owned by Titanflex, will be among the first partners to use the smart platform in glasses.

12:01that includes brands like Barber and Superdry. But Qualcomm says the chips are being used in the development of more than 40 different wearables, form factors like jewelry, earbuds with cameras, pins. Everybody loves a pin these days and watches. Yeah, I didn't hear them say, I guess jewelry is one I haven't seen as often, but I didn't hear them say any form factors that are crazy and there are supposedly 40 of them. So I'm like, where's the really innovative weird ones? that you're developing. But this is smart, right? For Qualcomm to get ahead of the game and say, like, look, yes, there's a lot of fighting over chips and data centers.

12:43There's a lot of fighting over chips and computers and smartphones. But this is the growth area. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get ahead in the wearable department. I'm with you on this. When I think of jewelry, it's like, okay, well, we already have rings, pendants. I've seen a, I've seen a pendant recently. I can't remember where now. Yeah. Um, you know, pins, uh, which interesting results so far. Um, earrings would be interesting. Uh, don't totally know how that would work, but that's something to think about. Um, the former Fitbit guys company, the 90 did the gem. That was the smart necklace. uh oh yes the gem okay yeah yeah yeah and and then you've got sort of like something that goes around your wrist okay we'll call that a watch you know like what else is it really going to be um unless you're kind of in the whoop category where it's it's not a watch but it's you know it's a wearable but still in a place that's for the most part pretty convenient to how do you get to 40 now that you're saying this i don't know yeah like bracelet necklace uh neck brace i don't know.

13:51I'm still waiting for that, for the contact lenses. I know, I know we're not there yet, but I'm like, as soon as you have that for me, I am all in. We always see a couple of those at CES with like heads up displays in your contact lenses. So yeah, but I want it to be like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what I want. I want it to be minority report and, and we're, we're getting there a long time ago. We weren't there at all. And now we're like 50 % there? Well, the majority of these things are going to be glasses. You can tell that from what Qualcomm was saying. And the first product to actually use the Snapdragon Reality Elite platform will be the Xreal Aura, which, as we said yesterday, has now dropped the project from its name.

14:33No longer Project Aura, just Xreal Aura. It runs Google's Android XROS. That makes it the second product announced, Samsung's Galaxy XR, which you can actually go buy or could, at least it was released, runs the XR OS. Samsung Galaxy XR, though, is untethered. You have a little battery pack thing that you stick in your pocket, whereas the Xreal Aura is tethered. It's meant to be plugged into something. Now, the marketing says this isn't a display. This is reality on your face. I can't remember exactly what they said. It was something like that. Not a headset, not display glasses, spatial computing glasses, but still tethered.

15:14And yeah, they look more like glasses, but they are going to be able to use the Snapdragon Reality Elite platform to be able to project things into the world around you in a way that just your typical X-Rail display glasses do not. Tom, you've got the first edition of the X-Rail. Well, I did. Yeah, I did the live with it on them. I have since sent those along to Scott Johnson, who's been trying them out with gaming, and we're supposed to get a report from him one of these days. That would be a good update. But Yeah. So how does, I don't know, from your experience, how does this feel like it's moving in the right direction?

15:52Yeah. I mean, obviously you get the more capable processor and you get the actual mixed reality. That means like now I can do cooler stuff, right? Before it was just, well, I'm seeing what's on my phone in front of me and that's cool. I can watch a big screen TV without having to have a big screen TV. You know, I can do some work on a big monitor. this is going to be able to say, I can put volumetric things in your room. So maybe you can redesign, right? You can move the furniture around because you have virtual furniture that's volumetric. I'm curious what they end up pushing this as a solution for.

16:31Because so far, what I'm seeing is a creative canvas so that you can float above the earth and draw art. It's one thing they have on here. You might want to do that. Some people anyway. Transforming the world around you. It doesn't seem like they have yet come up with the thing, or maybe they haven't found enough people come up with the thing to say, hey, yeah, no, this is what it's good for yet. Also, we don't know what the price is. You can put 300 bucks down, but you know it's going to be more than 300 bucks. They're just taking your money to find out how many they need to make. yeah fun little anecdote about vr and air glasses i guess vr glasses a little bit more uh more so i've got a friend who does a lot of travel he lives in la um and so he's in the back of a waymo a lot and just instead of sitting in traffic for an hour he's trying to work but he gets car sick and he says vr glasses are the solution really yeah because you can't see the horizon anymore And so you don't, you don't get that same sickness that I don't get it anyway.

17:38So, you know, knock on wood, I hope I never do. But for people who, who really have an issue, even just riding in the back of, in the back of anybody's car, kind of a, kind of an interesting thing. I thought, huh, never would have thought about that, but it helps him work. Yeah. You know, for the most part, you know, he's got a keyboard that, that is connected to the glasses when he's, when he's on the move. And in a Waymo, you're not, you don't feel like you're being rude to the driver by ignoring them. Because there's no driver. We don't care. We don't care. Leave me alone. As long as you don't get sick from VR, which some people do, then that's a really excellent solution.

18:13Automatics WordPress VIP, which operates the enterprise version of WordPress, issued a report with results of a survey of 2 ,000 respondents conducted back in April, comprising 800 enterprise decision makers and CMOs and 1 ,200 U.S. adults. It found that 60 % of respondents said that the use of AI in messaging made them think more negatively about a brand. An 86 claim to not trust AI and just want original sources. 74 % of enterprise decision-making said AI discoverability and attribution are a main or significant priority. Yeah, first I'll point out, I'll focus on the I want original sources part of this.

18:57I was heartened to see people thinking that way. There's always a difference between thinking and acting because even I have found myself looking at a response from AI mode on Google and being tempted to just take it without clicking on the thing to make sure that it's real. Now, if I'm doing my job for DTNS, I don't do that because that is important. But in my daily life, when I'm just curious about something, it's kind of drudgery to have to do that. So I'm glad people are saying that I'm very curious how many people actually do it every time. I do think it's significant and companies need to respond to the fact that 60 % of the people said, yeah, when you say you've got AI, I get a negative feeling.

19:39That doesn't mean you've lost me, but you pushed me the wrong direction. Using AI in your marketing is not helping. Yeah, I definitely have AI fatigue and it's not because I have AI fatigue about using it. I think a lot of these tools are pretty great. And I'm trying to, you know, stay, stay above water, you know, figuring out what I can use this in my daily life and not feel left behind because it's moving so quickly. But I do, I do understand, you know, a new product, which is like, now with more AI power, whatever they're saying. Yeah. Yeah. You, it gets kind of eye rolly cause you're like, Oh, great.

20:20Okay. So just another machine doing something that may or may not be working well. And what about all the people? And you know, there's, there's, there's just sort of, we're in a backlash phase right now. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's the biggest part of it. Um, I, I, the only thing I'd add on top of that is, uh, there's also the like, okay, but does it really like what kind of AI, what, what are you talking about? And how to, if it's a large language model, how does a large language model help clean my floor better? Like I don't need an LLM in my mop. Right. So sometimes you see these things are like, why is there AI in there?

20:56I don't understand. Like, and it, and I think that lowers people's trust when they hear those words. Well, and I think, yes. And I think that the, the, the whole sort of like now with AI plus, you know, powered mop, you know, like whatever. It's like a lot of this is just, it's just silly. Yeah. It's silly. I mean, if it's a, if it's a Roomba style mop, then sure. But if it's like just a hand mop, no. How are you going to do that? We're not ready for that yet. Uh, you still got to mop your floor, everybody. Well, live with it, uh, does often cover AI powered products. Uh, we cover all sorts of stuff.

21:32This is the show where me, Roger Chang, and the DTNS family of folks review all sorts of stuff, products, platforms, services, things that we actually live with. Not just a review show. We're actually living with the stuff and trying to give you informed decision-making data for yourself. We also have our very own Patreon now. To support Live With It as we grow of the show, head to patreon.com slash livewithit. We have had quite a few patrons as of late, and we're very, very happy about that. We love that you love the show. We want to do more of it. Let us know what you want to see on a future episode.

22:11Remember, it doesn't have to be a brand new product. Could be. Doesn't have to be. Just something you really want to deep dive on.

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23:02This 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.

23:34And now some quick headlines. The kind of thing that will make people go, wow, that person's really smart. Yeah, you read a lot. Which we do. Android 17 started arriving for Google Pixel users and Wear OS 7 started arriving for smartwatches. It includes upgrades to multitasking, social media video and gaming, as well as one-time location access and longer battery life for watches. Telegram has asked the Delhi High Court to overturn the Indian government's block of the messaging service, not only access to it, but App Store listings of it. The block was ordered to last until June 22nd because the National Testing Agency alleged that organized cheating was happening over Telegram.

24:19So they blocked it for the whole country. Telegram alleges that Reliance, one of the ISPs that is doing the blocking, implemented the ban in such a way that it's affecting users outside of India, including in the United Arab Emirates. WA Beta Info has found indications in code that WhatsApp is developing a feature to let users send view once text messages, similar to how you can send view once photos or videos or voice notes. Yeah, there's been a couple of things like this coming out of W Beta Info. This one's not actually in the beta yet, but it does seem like it's something they would send and something people want to be able to do.

24:58Estonia plans to offer personal identification numbers to agents. That way it would better let you limit them, control them, and even audit them when they do things on your behalf. So you would know what the agent did and what you did. And AI agents is the kind of agents we're talking about. Not your friendly travel agent. They already have a personal ID. So I thought that was, that was. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. Estonia. Listen, some people I've seen a little snickering online about this, but this might be something that many countries decide to implement later on and say, you know, Estonia had it right.

25:41Yeah. And here's another thing. You can do this even if you're not in Estonia. Their electronic ID system is available worldwide, which I think is incredibly smart because it helps raise money for the government of Estonia. You can become an e-citizen of Estonia to take advantage of these sorts of identification plans. And yeah, I think this is really cool because it says, oh, okay, I have this agent that I run through OpenAI. I've now given it an ID. So when it does something, I know that it did it and not me. It doesn't necessarily absolve you of responsibility, but it allows people to be able to tell.

26:17And it also would allow companies who provide services to say, oh, okay, if we see IDs from agents, we can now tell their agents, not the actual person, and treat them differently and make sure that you put in more guardrails for them. A reminder that three certificates that cryptographically verify firmware and software that loads during boot in Windows and Linux will expire on June 24th. You have some time, but not much. You probably updated them, but it's worth a reminder just in case you have any doubts. Yeah, this is the one that came in the automatic updates, but people who don't have automatic updates on need to go in and make sure that they get updated.

26:58Blue Origins Jeff Jeff Bezos says launch infrastructure, including propellant tanks and a booster in the integration facility in Florida, were not damaged by the explosion of the New Glenn rocket last month. And that means the repairs are proceeding better than expected, according to Bezos. And that means his company, Blue Origin, says that they will be able to launch another New Glenn rocket by the end of this year. That is, I am, I'm shocked, to be honest. now i don't don't get too shocked until they actually launch the rock sure sure but this just feels very optimistic uh based on the explosion uh and many of us probably if not all of us saw uh various videos of this it was you know very dramatic and very damaging um and you know a lot of folks right away were like throwing the towel they're they're not going to be you know they're We're not going to have anything ready to go again for at least another couple of years because of the catastrophic damage.

28:00So, all right. Let's see what we got. So you're saying there's a chance. Stay safe, everybody. Just stay safe. Allbirds, the company that sold off its shoemaking business and pivoted to making compute infrastructure, has officially changed its name. Tom, do you know what it is? I do, but I would have... Pretend you don't. Actually, I might have been able to guess now that I think about it because it's pretty obvious. The new name is SmartBird. Yeah. It was announced Wednesday. So it is a former shoe company that is now smart and may be your next AI agent. I guess I probably would have guessed BAIRD.

28:42Why? Because they would just shove AI into the name. Oh, I see. Yeah. No, that's actually kind of smart. Yeah. Like little B. Yeah. SmartBird's a better name. Smartbird is a better name. And also this means that Allbirds can continue to be used by the company that bought the license to make the shoes, which will still be made. And so a lot of people won't even notice. They'll just be like, oh, no, Allbirds, that's still a shoe company. They just won't know that the actual Allbirds changed its name to Smartbird. And we'll see if they are a Smartbird eventually. Yeah. uh nikai asia reports that byd the car maker google the uh advertising company amd the chip maker and tesla the car maker have all contacted samsung to explore contract chip making that they would normally get from taiwan's tsmc because the taiwanese chip maker is at capacity uh so that just a little interesting nugget when you see companies that big who would just normally go right to TSMC without question going like, oh, well, they don't have room to make the thing we want.

29:44So maybe Samsung can make it for us. And Samsung's like, yeah, we would love to. Indeed. Yeah. I mean, you at least want people knocking on your door. Yeah. That's the first step. We like to end every episode here on DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Greg is bringing us some good news. Yes. Greg writes, hey, DTNS team, I just wanted to bring a story to your attention. Nintendo finally fixed the eShop on the original Switch. And I thought it seemed like a good bit of news to make us look a little smarter in the future. Thank you, Greg, for catching on to that. This is great. The eShop patch for the original Nintendo Switch is listed as a redesign, and it's mostly about colors.

30:30But everybody has noticed that the eShop, which pretty much since launch for the original Switch has been sluggish and annoying to use, is now snappy. So good job, Nintendo. And thank you, Greg, for pointing that out. Indeed. If you're thinking about anything we talked about on the show, something we might talk about on a future show, share it with us. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. We read every single email. Yes. Be like Greg. Thank you, Greg, for contributing to today's show. and thank everybody out there for listening and being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business, folks.

31:05If you like what we do and you want us to keep doing it and maybe get it ad-free and get some bonus episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll talk to you there. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

31:27This 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.

32:24Like people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love. So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.