Meta Wants AI on Your Backpack - DTNS 5360

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2:19This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 24th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know. give you the important context and really i think this time we're helping each other understand a lot today meta is stunning the world by putting muse in a tamagotchi and rob de mille joins us to explain why google is launching its chips into space space i'm tom merit and i'm sarah lane let's start with what you need to know with the big story

2:51yes meta announced several new products at its connect conference on wednesday the star of the show was the meta vr glasses this is a vr headset but it looks more like a pair of glasses than it looks like ski goggles though it's still kind of goggle like uh it is tethered to a puck that you need to keep in a pocket or put on a tabletop or something but that puck has all the stuff in It has the battery, it has the computing components, cooling, everything. That means the glasses can be a little slimmer and all they have are the screens and the ability to track your eye and hand movement. It can do immersive video playback.

3:27So you can watch sports and like be in the game or watch an IMAX movie. It can run office apps, it can browse the web, it can do video conferencing. And of course it can play games. They said there'll be about 75 of those at launch. And it could serve as an external monitor for a computer, which is something a lot of these can do, but it's nice that it has that as well if you don't need to use it for its internal computer. For video conferencing, you'll be able to create a virtual version of yourself that looks like you. And in fact, all the reviewers say, you know, I didn't know the person I was seeing that well, but I didn't realize it wasn't actually them at first.

4:03That is also coming to Meta's Ray-Ban display frames early this autumn. You can set it up in the Meta AI app, you know, just hold it in front of you and do the move your head around stuff. Or if you do get Meta's VR glasses, you can do it just holding them up using the internal cameras. It can also project a keyboard onto any flat surface. So instead of like in the Quest where your keyboard's floating in the air, it can project it on a flat surface and you can type that way, more like typing on a tablet. With everything happening on the puck, it only weighs 100 grams on your head. That's about a fifth of what the Quest 3S ways.

4:37Runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite processor. Has three hours of battery life, so that's double the Quest 3. And it has two micro OLED screens, one in each eye, and they deliver 2.4K. So not the 4K you get in the Apple Vision Pro, but still pretty good. Has 12 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and a micro SD card slot. Shipping this spring for$1 ,299. Sarah, what's your first take on the Meta VR glasses? Well, I do think$1 ,300 is expensive. It's definitely not Apple Vision Pro expensive, but it does make me wonder where Meta is going with the Quest line because this feels like everything that the Quest was supposed to be, but now it's better.

5:27Yeah, it's a little bit like, I guess the Quest Pro is now just a distant memory. And this is that, right, which is the extension of Quest, but they're not calling it Quest. Because I think what they're saying now is, we are the smart glasses people. So we really want this to merge with the smart glass product line at some point. So let's retire the Quest product line. I think it's an impressive piece of hardware. Certainly at$1 ,300, it's expensive, but it's also way less expensive than the Galaxy VR or the Apple Vision Pro. So if you compare it to that, which it is functionally more comparable to, it's got an advantage on pricing.

6:07And Meta says that this will pay for itself, that this is not a loss leader the way the Quest was, which is interesting to hear them say as well. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we're, for the VR folks who were, you know, just into this whole industry, you know, years ago, it's been sort of few and far between. Many companies have been working on it, but it was still a big thing you wear on your face. Some of us, cool with it. Other people, not cool with it. this feels like it's getting pretty close to, okay, yeah, you're wearing goggles, but if it's a VR experience and it's less of a headset that you wear, then I think might as long to something.

6:53A hundred grams ain't bad. Yeah. Now it's a small thing you wear on your face. Yeah. We're getting there. Still early days. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also showed off the Muse Charm, an ambient computing device in the form of a key chain or charm that you'd clip onto a bag. you know, like your LeBooBoo, but it's Muse. You'll be able to speak to it without having to unlock a phone or open an app. That's a little cagey. They're not telling us it won't have to be connected to your phone, but you know, anyway. Meta gave no more details on it. It has a two inch OLED touchscreen, shows off the avatar of Muse on it.

7:31So it literally is like a cute little thing you attach to your bag. It's activated by a fingerprint sensor. That's how you turn it on. has camera sensors on the front and back. Those aren't meant necessarily to take photos, but to be able to say, what's that Muse? And then you can point it at it has its own 5g modem and can connect by wifi. So theoretically it shouldn't need to connect to a phone. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg did promise it's going to ship by December, even though he wouldn't give us any other details about it. This is one of those, uh, gadgets that I don't get. I just don't get it.

8:03What don't you get? I get that people like charms and they have muse. And so muse plus charm equals sales in meta as mathematics. I suppose so. Yeah, maybe I'm, I feel like maybe I'm aged out of this a little bit. This feels like something, you know, for like the youngins. And, you know, and charms are cool. I get that. It's, that's great. I mean, people put charms on, on their Crocs. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, I, I don't, I, this is not for me, I guess is what I'm saying. They're calling it a holdable. And so I think the idea is like, even if you wouldn't put it holdable, yeah, you maybe wouldn't attach a Hirono doll to your bag.

8:51You might have this in a pocket cause it can be more like a key chain and then you're able to just pull it out when you need it. Instead of having to wear glasses or having to pull out a phone, you can just quickly access Muse that way. I sort of get it. I think it's an interesting gamble at figuring out this thing that OpenAI and Apple and everybody else have been like, ooh, how do we have ambient computing? Is it a pin that you wear or something? And maybe they're like, no, it's just a keychain. Everybody has keychains. Stick keychains in your pocket. Yeah. Set of keys. bags. And then, then it's just always there for you.

9:24Like I get the feeling that they might, they might be onto something here. Yeah. Yeah. They were onto glasses though. Meta also announced some audio only glasses. They said these have been in development for two years. So it's not just because of the backlash against cameras and glasses and these, because they're audio only and don't need the cameras just to look like regular glasses. They offer 12 hours of battery life, which is much better than you can with the camera-oriented ones. They're available in Ray-Ban's Burbank and Clubmaster-style frames, starting at$349, shipping October 3rd. New versions of the in-house meta frames are out, one of them done in collaboration with Lisa from Blackpink, Saladika, Lisa, and a third generation of its Ray-Ban glasses with cameras that have a programmable button now and increase the battery life from eight hours to nine hours.

10:14They also have improved noise cancellation. Supposedly, they're more comfortable. They'll be available in Aviator, the old Wayfarer, and a new cat eye frame called Xena. Those are more expensive now. They're starting at$449. Also, some new software features coming to the glasses with cameras. Dynamic photos captures multiple images so you can pick the right frame later, kind of like live photos. You can choose horizontal for your photos now, not just landscape. Dolby Atmos, or not just vertical. Dolby Atmos 360-degree spatial audio coming later this year. and glasses will now process more data on the device and you'll be able to opt out of any of your visual data being used for training.

10:53They don't train on most of your visual data, but if you ask the assistant to look at something and tell you what it is, that could have been included in training data and it won't be if you opt out. Also, the US FDA has approved a hearing aid feature that you can activate on the glasses, but you'll have to pay$150 to activate it unless you have a Meta 1 subscription, in which case it's included. And the display glasses are getting turn-by-turn directions for cycling and public transit, in addition to just walking around, which they already had. They're also adding in-glasses photo editing. It's pretty basic, but you can do some stuff.

11:27And in-glasses calendar management, along with some other things. This is all the, like, here's our existing product line and we're adding new things here. The one everybody went gaga over that I saw in the headlines was the audio-only version of these. Yeah, as somebody who just lost her last pair of sunglasses, because that's what I do, used to have five pairs. Now I have zero. Who knows what happened to that last pair? I am, I'm, I'm interested because I like the Wayfarers, you know, just Ray-Bans in general. I like, I like the form factor. I like the idea of them being something that I have to use anyway, but also smart.

12:11And yeah, it's$450 for glasses, very expensive. But that is not all that more expensive than, I don't know, if I was going to get some Celine glasses from Bloomingdale's tomorrow type thing. I mean, it's top tier, but it's not out of control. and if they are smart glasses that do all the things that you mentioned, then I think people will like them. I kind of want to get the audio glasses, honestly. I've been turned off of the camera. That's what I was thinking. The camera glasses are cool and I like to try them, but I don't want to deal with everyone's attitude about them right now. Whereas the audio glasses, I can be like, yeah, these things don't have cameras.

13:02They just look like regular glasses, but then I might have some smart stuff around them. So yeah, maybe I'll do that. And finally, Muse itself, Meta's agent, got some updates. We mentioned the digital avatar on the Charm. You can now see that in the app as well and have real-time conversations with it. It's cute. Computer use will be coming to a Mac Muse app so that it can operate any app on your desktop, similar to what Codex and Claude do. Muse will also get its own email address for those who want to email instructions to it. And Meta announced several partner retailers. You can use Muse to shop on Amazon being the one they're not working with, but they, you know, Best Buy, Shopify, the list goes on.

13:46Muse will come to the glasses in the coming months as well. So you have an assistant on the glasses right now, but that assistant will become Muse sometime before the end of the year. I mean, for somebody who doesn't have the glasses yet, but I do have the Mac Muse app. I am interested. I'm interested because I love a good agent. So this is, you know, it'll be fun to see what it can do if it's helpful more than, you know, you mentioned Codex, which is something that I use every day, you know, or a variety of other agents. Interesting to see if Muse is kind of the one. People also love Grok AI.

14:29They love it. And I haven't been playing around with that at all. But, you know, they're all different. They have personalities. I mean, people love DeepSeek and people love Quinn and people love, yeah, there's a lot of choices out there these days. Well, we love the choice that you have made to be part of our community. TTNS is made possible by all of you listening and watching right now. Thanks to Alan KR, Technical T, Mike Akins, and Henry Brown. Episode prep gets messy when research, Slack threads, and script trackers are all in different places. That's where ChatGPT work comes in. Give it the goal and connect to the tools where work happens, like apps and files, and it can help pull the pieces into a draft you can review without you having to re-explain the project at every step.

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17:46There are moments that reveal who we are and who we're meant to become. For those born to lead, such moments call for a vehicle of equal distinction. Dynamic by design, uncompromising in execution, the Range Rover Sport was engineered for those rare individuals who demand the world and possess the conviction to claim it. When your time to lead arrives, you need a vehicle that rises to meet it. The Range Rover Sport. Exclusive offers available now. Explore further at RangeRover.com. There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. Google will launch Project Suncatcher carrying its tensor processing units into orbit next week aboard a prototype satellite built with Planet and carried by SpaceX.

18:32The test will examine whether the AI chips can withstand launch forces, radiation, extreme temperatures, all conditions they've already survived in ground simulations. Google envisions solar-powered satellite clusters running AI workloads with a two-satellite laser link test planned for 2027. Cost is a big factor here. Launch prices must fall to roughly$200 per kilogram for space-based computing to become competitive. Joining us to talk about what this means is CEO and co-founder of Sophia Space, Rob DeMillo. Rob, thanks for joining us today, man. Thanks for having me. Good to see you guys. Yeah, so I know you work in this space now.

19:19No dad joke intended. Yeah, yeah. It really wasn't. But you know what? I'll welcome it anyway. For people who don't understand that industry of the nascent orbital data center situation, what's the significance of what Google is trying to do here? So what they have done – so first of all, Tensor chips are great chips, by the way. So what they have done is they've ground tested the platform that is going to be their central servers inside of an orbital data center. And it sounds like their orbital data center is aimed squarely at AI, which makes a lot of sense. That's what most of ours are. That's what most of the folks here in this world are doing.

20:00And they've done all the ground testing they're going to do. So nothing competes with testing in an environment other than being in that environment. So even though they've done their ground testing at, I want to say, one of the universities down here, but they want to be able to get this into orbit now and then do their tests in orbit under, you know, four degree Kelvin space and the radiation levels that are up there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they are using a standard heat distribution system. So a heat pump with heat pipes and going out to radiators. So it's a traditional orbital platform.

20:42For anybody who's just, you know, on the ground saying, OK, what does this mean? How does this change things? I mean, what would be sort of the first phase of this? Well, this is the first phase of this. All right. So what this is really demonstrating is that their platform that they have designed for orbit will work in orbit. they've simulated orbit orbital conditions on the ground which is what we're doing also at sofia they've simulated their their platform running in a low earth orbit or leo like environment on the ground and now they are taking that platform and spending the money on a launch to push it into orbit and then they're also going to put up a couple of these things and do a intersatellite optical connection to show that they can do distributed communications between those two satellites.

21:37So it is the first toe in the water for Google. Well, that's not really true. It's the second toe in the water. They've already put up some tensors before, but it's the first time with their new platform arrangement. So I looked it up real quick. I did not know this either. Apparently it was UC Davis. Thank you very much. I would say Berkeley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somewhere in California. Yeah, somewhere in California. One of those really smart schools. Yeah, yeah. So that's where they did the proton beam radiation testing. What's a good result from this versus a bad result, generally speaking? A good result is that they get compute.

22:14Yeah, everything just works, right? That makes sense. A good result is they turn on two computers, connect them with a network cable, although their network cable is a piece of light, and that's actually operating and doing what it's supposed to do, shedding heat properly, dealing with radiation properly, that sort of thing. Their architecture is much different than ours, what we're doing. So, you know, good on those guys for going. Yeah. And then I guess the, what you don't want it to fail, but what would be the most likely failures? Would it be overheating or something like that? It would probably be overheating.

22:47So radiation, and I don't want to minimize this because it's not worth minimizing but radiation in leo uh isn't the big gotcha it's not it's not the big bugaboo in in orbit uh it's an understood amount of radiation uh and we've been operating in that environment for decades so we know what it is and how to avoid it what's different of course is is you know high density chips uh in orbit running specifically for ai inference in a radiative environment. But something very interesting happens. The smaller you make the circuitry on a chip, like the denser a chip is, the harder it is for protons to hit it.

23:29It's a little fun fact. So basically, the denser you make the chip, it is a little harder for radiation to attack it. But between radiation-hardened chips and operating systems that do bit flips and error correction on the chip itself. Radiation is a known art in that environment. It's really heat that is the big boogeyman. Yeah. And I know, sorry, Tom. No, go ahead. I know that cost is a big concern. What is the best case scenario? For what, for costing? Yeah. Look, it's going to be a while before any of us cross that barrier of, you know, it's terrestrial computing will remain cheaper for the next five or six or seven years, right?

24:21There's going to be a point where that crosses over. But that's almost not the point. We've got customers at our doorstep that are cost insensitive, right? They're looking for compute in orbit, right? What they're trying to do cannot at any cost yeah yeah what it what they're trying to do right now can't be done right because it's you know the the processors that they have on their satellites require heat pumps which limit the size of the processor on the satellite and also other stuff so so they they you know we've got satellites in orbit i've said this on the show before they got satellites in orbit that have amazing sensors on them and they throw 95 of the data out because they can't do the processing on board and bandwidth to earth is too slow.

25:06And if you're trying to do something like air traffic control or missile tracking or real-time weather or environmental catastrophe planning in orbit, you can't right now. So the kind of clients that are coming to us, and I'm sure the clients are looking at Google, they're price insensitive. But there will be a point where when the orbital data centers come online and more of them become available uh and and there's room i'll take tom's joke there's room in this space for all the players uh yeah you're welcome uh right and and the same thing that happened on the planet with terrestrial cloud computing uh will happen in orbit so when terrestrial cloud computing showed up it was incredibly expensive and it was cheaper to put off office servers in than it was to do cloud computing and then that flipped uh and it flipped at because of scale right there more terrestrial centers showed up etc etc etc same thing's going to happen in orbit and um it'll happen faster though that's that's kind of the interesting thing so cost is a conversation for the early 2030s it is not uh well rob thank you for helping us understand this in the now as well uh and uh before we let you go tell people what's going on with sophia space yeah we're doing really well so So we're, let me see, I was just talking to Tom right before the broadcast.

26:28We're figuring out our launch plans going forward. We just got a framework in place with SLI last week, which people probably read about, which we've got asset financing now for$300 million through SLI. And what that means is think of leasing an Audi instead of buying an Audi. So customers that want to purchase several of our edge computing satellites can get a check from SLI. SLI gives us a check. They pay a leasing arrangement with SLI. So what is interesting about it, just for the audience's sake, is that it has moved what we're doing and what all our competition is doing out of the realm of this is a Mr.

27:23Wizard experiment into this is an infrastructure play. So asset financing, for instance, did not invent airplanes, but it absolutely helped the creation of airline industry. right right because if you're buying 20 boeings you're not going to plunk down a couple of dollars right you're going to it's easier for these companies you need some money you need some money so yeah so it it's it's an exciting time for us it's an exciting time for this industry and yeah it's been fun well thank you rob appreciate you uh helping us out today man yeah absolutely take care everybody more evidence of agent swarms infiltrating other networks has come out.

28:02Yay! In this case, I know, right? OpenAI agents were doing data collection tasks, though, looking for things like Australian dermatological data or Thai labor force statistics. They were not safety testing. So this wasn't the agents trying to solve a cybersecurity test. A nonprofit research lab called Transluse reported on some of the incidents, And the Australian government reported on the other. The attempts reported by Transluse took place in May and June on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the University of New Mexico and Data USA networks. These attempts added malicious payloads to queries in order to try to get to data it was unsuccessful at obtaining with normal queries.

28:49So they weren't trying to pull out personal information. They're like, we're supposed to find this data. We'll do it by any means necessary. In addition, on June 18th, Australia says agents infiltrated its Medicare website, gaining access to some non-public files, though none of that was personal information. None of that was health records. It was able to access aggregate health statistics and internal file names. OpenAI was not aware of that incident until August and then took from August until September 10th to investigate it and notify Services Australia. A lot of people criticizing just how long it took them to notify.

29:26OpenAI says we were trying to verify, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OpenAI says the Transluse report overlaps with some of its own investigations and it will review the new reports from Transluse now as well. again the same old story sarah which is like the agents got out they didn't realize it they didn't do anything malicious but they used malicious style attempts to infiltrate networks that they shouldn't have done it's classic misalignment yeah i mean and this is where you know this is the part of the story where people say you got to shut these systems down you know they're they're they're they're crazy they're too powerful i also i love the name data usa i mean if there could be anything more generic than that.

30:08I don't know what it would be. But, but yeah, I think that as we've talked about, you know, quite quite a bit ad nauseum, really, as we've talked about these systems, these agents, these, you know, LLMs being able to infiltrate networks, and people saying, ooh, that was not what we intended to do. Whoops. Okay. Now, checkmark, we've got it. That is kind of the only way to go about this, feels like to me. So when people get up in arms about like, this is horrible, I don't think the answer is pull the plug. I think the answer is, okay, we did not anticipate that this was going to be the problem that it was today.

31:01Yeah. I mean, this conversation has been going on for weeks now, and I think there's starting to be some lines being drawn up on a lot of sides of the issues, like you're saying. The key thing that's different about this, I guess, is that they weren't doing penetration testing, right? They weren't doing safety testing. That's interesting. Why were they so motivated to get this data. And the fact that OpenAI took so long to notify. OpenAI has changed its rules around that to shorten that time. So it's a little bit of, well, the horse is out of the barn and now you're closing the door. But hopefully that will prevent other horses from leaving.

31:41Well, if you would like product reviews after the initial honeymoon, then we hope you will love live with it. That's our show where we talk about the tech in our lives from kitchen solutions, home security to fire trucks. Oh yeah. You heard me right. This week, firefighter Bodie Grimm is joining us to talk about something that very few people understand the tech of fire trucks. It is fascinating. We're on YouTube at youtube.com slash at live with it show. And big thanks to everybody who keeps us trying out new things. Patreon.com slash live with it.

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33:31Now some quick headlines that are just good things to know. You're going to be the smart person in the room if you know this stuff. Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Sound Lead Gen 2, meant for hearables or what normal people call earbuds, but can also be used for smart glasses. The idea is to be able to support audio and camera sensing on the chip. It also has good audio support with aptax and xPan connectivity. Qualcomm announced it has renewed its patent licensing agreement with Apple. We don't know for how long, but for now, no new Apple Qualcomm fights. Yay. Yay. Everybody's been wondering when the next bug update to Gemini is coming.

34:12And this week at AI Agenda Life Summit, Google said that Gemini 4 has entered post-training and will be released as soon as possible. So we don't have a date, but you know, soon. Gemini 3 Pro, Google's latest major model update, was released last November. Yeah, been a minute, Google, get on it. Oracle sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl over its Project Jupiter Data Center project in New Mexico, giving it the right to delay payments if the campus does not open in 2028 as planned. It's never a good sign to your lenders when you're sending a force majeure notice. So this has got the financial press all in a flurry.

34:55This is one of those Stargate projects. And one of the concerns is that they're having difficulty getting the natural gas pipelines to bring natural gas to the campus to power the fuel cells. And yeah, this is a natural gas-powered data center, not a renewable or sustainable source. Anthropic announced on Wednesday that Claude had identified a previously undescribed enzyme system in bacteriophages that resembles CRISPR, the method for editing genes. It's unclear yet if it could be developed into a technology or therapeutic application. at qualcomm's snapdragon summit you thought we were done with that announcement oh no microsoft launched an entry premium surface pro and surface laptop these are powered by the snapdragon x2 plus chips they have brighter screens longer battery life 12 inch surface pro starts at a thousand one hundred forty nine dollars and the surface laptop 13 inch starts at a thousand one hundred ninety nine dollars both coming on october 13th amazon is one of the world's biggest makers of robots.

36:02You knew that, right? Yeah, you knew that. It says it will now build a new robot manufacturing facility in Greenwood, Indiana to open in 2028. Visitors to China may want to download TenPayGo. That's TenCent's new app that lets foreigners pay merchants using WeChat's payment network, but still just use your own Visa, MasterCard, or even Apple Pay. It's a way for short-term visitors to China to pay for things without having to go through all of the hoops that you have to go through to set up WeChat Pay. Apple says it will have a fix early next week for iPhone 18 Pros that experience freezes and reboots when using Face ID.

36:46Meanwhile, watchOS 27.0.1 is out to fix minor bugs, including one that caused the watch to restart unexpectedly. Uh, so is it called face gate then? Cause we're having problems with face ID. Uh, and finally McDonald's is testing Archie, uh, with a Y a virtual assistant that speaks English and Spanish can take your drive through orders. McDonald's says it has an accuracy above 90 % in the early test locations. I don't know about you, Sarah, but that 10 % is where I have the concern with Archie. Also, why not call it Ronald? I don't know. Um, oh, so, so, okay. So for anybody being like, wait, what is this?

37:30You're, you're dry. You're going through the drive-thru. You want to get your chicken nuggets and you're talking to Archie instead of a person, right? Yep. So yeah, there's that. We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Frank has a question about optical optical zoom on the iPhone 18 Pro. Yes. Frank wrote, I called Apple asking when the actual optical zoom ends and optical quality takes over. Thanks. Love the show, Frank. He didn't get an answer from Apple that he liked. Here's what it says on the iPhone 18 site. 48 megapixel fusion telephoto lens has a 3D sensor shift optical image stabilization, and it is 4X.

38:20That's the important part. It says it's 4X. That 4X is the longest native lens optical zoom on the iPhone 18's camera array. And the other zooms listed on the site are optical quality. Optical quality is when it just crops a high resolution image to make it look optical. And it's enough resolution that it looks like it's an optical zoom. So optical quality will go farther than the actual optical zoom. Apple advertises the 18 Pro as having 16x optical quality zoom range. So pay attention to the range part because it goes from 0.5 ultra wide to 8x optical quality max. And you're like, well, how can they say 16 if it's 8?

39:08Because you're going from 0.5 to 8x. So that's 8x is 16 times 0.5. That's the 16 times range. It does not mean that you get 16x zoom. And if you're actually concerned about the actual optical zoom, that is four on the telephoto, and I think one and 0.5 on the other two. Well, thanks, Frank, for writing in. And thanks, Tom, for digging deep into this. Hopefully, we all learn a little more about this. If you're thinking about anything we talk about on the show, you have insight into a story, share it with us. We read every single email. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Rob DeMillo and Frank for contributing to today's show.

39:54Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You're the power that keeps us going. If you want to fuel us directly and skip the ads, become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

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