The Pebble Index 01 Smart Ring Is… Different - DTNS 5161

0:03This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 9th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. Oh, we got hardware news. I know a lot of you are like, what do you do? Stop talking about policies and AIs. Let's talk hardware. There's a little AI in it. But Pebble has revealed a smart ring that's less about fitness and more about the mind. Yeah, I can't wait to talk about this. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Tom Merritt. Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.

0:35pebble announced a new smart ring called pebble index zero one index i think because you know maybe you want to put this on your index finger it lets wearers press a button that's on the ring to talk to it so you can capture notes you can set reminders set timers enter calendar events that sort of stuff it does not however measure your heart rate it doesn't track your sleep It's really meant to be a tool for memory enhancement, let's say, not a fitness wearable like most of the rings that we've seen, the smart rings. The wearer will tap and hold the button. It looks kind of like maybe a squishy button, which activates the recording.

1:15And then, of course, you would release when you're all done with the recording. That finalizes it. This is really interesting. The battery on the device, because, you know, it's a ring. It's a small device, right? The battery never has to be recharged, which is not to say that it won't ever run out of that. That's another way of saying it's not a rechargeable battery. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can't charge it. But it's interesting when you think about a piece of hardware that you're going to spend somewhere around the$75 to$100 price range for. Pebble estimates that the battery on this device can support between 12 to 14 total hours of recording, which I'm not sure.

1:55That sounds low, but maybe it's enough. Once the battery is dead, of course, users can actually send it back to Pebble for recycling. So there's that. Pairs with the smartphone, yes. Sends the audio to the device for on-device AI transcription and management. There is no subscription fees either. So that's pretty cool. The index 01 comes in three colorways, Tom, or colors, polished silver, polished gold, and matte black. Ships in March. Pre-orders now for$75. That price is going to jump to$99 once they begin shipping. And I think you're excited, Tom, aren't you? I ordered one. Yes, interested would be the way to describe it.

2:39I was like, at$75, why not? Now, granted, with tax and shipping, it ended up being around$92 for a disposable device. Let's be honest. This has got a watch battery in it. The idea is that you only do three to six seconds of recording at a time. I love that it's pushed to talk. So that's going to keep it from accidentally being on and wasting your battery life. It is meant for reminders. It is meant for like, oh, remind me that such and such is a thing, which is actually what I use my Apple Watch reminders for the show. It's a thing that I do with Molly Wood. So I'm like, oh, this could be really cool.

3:21It's very privacy forward. Like you said, everything's on device. And it's hackable because Pebble loves to let users do stuff. So you can make that button do other things. You can set reminders, create alarms, create timers, play, pause, and skip music tracks, or just use webhooks to code your own something and have it do something else. So I think this is really interesting. It's priced just far enough below$100 for now. I wonder when it goes up to$99 how people feel about it. But for now, where it's like, well, if I can get a couple of years use out of this, that's okay. right that's fifty dollars of use a year that's less than most of these rings charge for a subscription uh to their service so you know you're paying up front uh they they're trying to be responsible by letting you do recycling uh it's an interesting take on on making a purpose built device rather than a try to be everything device yeah i'm a little concerned or curious about phantom touches uh i want to know and of course obviously they've done a lot of of studying on this certainly uh before they bring it to market but when you're talking about a device like this that really does carry a premium on how much you can use it right um phantom touches is a real issue or potentially you know it has the potential to be a real issue so hopefully that's all dialed in because it would really stink to get one of these things and then realize oh i didn't realize that when I had my hand in my pocket, my pocket was pushing it and now it's dead.

4:56I don't know if that's going to be an issue. It's just something that I'm concerned with. Good question. But I have put in a pre-order primarily because more and more, I just really appreciate systems where when I have that random idea or that random thought, the lowest effort that I have to go through to capture it before it fleets out of my mind, which happens so often, has been really helpful to me on devices like nothing has the little button you can press that if you hold it, it immediately kicks into record and then files it away. That stuff is genuinely useful for me. The problem here that I'm concerned about is the short lifespan because when I record audio in this way, I don't do it in short little bursts.

5:41I have a long idea. I want to explain it. I want to capture it so that I can manage it like clay later. And I fear that I'm going to burn through this real quick yeah i'm surprised they didn't make it replaceable it's just a watch battery in there uh but you know it's a ring so it's a little bit difficult to you know make it repairable i suppose um i i wonder the same thing about what uh battery life i have actually i have two concerns about this and i'm not saying they're blockers but i have the new uh core pebble duo which is their very basic return to the Pebble interface. I like it a lot, but it's supposed to have a month long battery life.

6:22I've been getting two and a half weeks out of it the way I use it. And maybe I'm a hard user on it, right? Cause I'm doing more experimentation and trying stuff with it. So I'm like, well, two years, is that really two years or is it a year for me? And then the Bluetooth, they, They actually talked about how difficult it is to use the Bluetooth stack and make a connection. Every once in a while, I have to re-jigger the Bluetooth connection with my phone to make this work. And that is what this device relies entirely on, is that it can only do, I think, up to five minutes of recording locally on the ring itself before it has to dump everything out to the phone.

7:03So if that Bluetooth connection is going in and out, that could be a pain point as well. mm-hmm yeah but you know we're sitting here criticizing it we're doing what everybody does and it's like actually it's pretty cool device though i i don't want that to get lost i think this is i think this is a really interesting approach and priced right yeah i completely agree like the price is low enough that i was like okay you know what i'll bite i'll jump in on this this is close enough to something that is kind of speaking to me on a need level like Like, even if I just get this ring and I kind of train myself out of using it in the like long form, just blather on type thing and just use it for like, oh, remind me to do this.

7:44Oh, I have an interview tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. You know, those little short bursts. Then, yeah, I can imagine 12 to 14 hours could extend for a very long time. And maybe you get to the end of that and you're like, you know what? That was totally worth it. I'm getting another one of these. It's just kind of a shame to have to do that. You know, it would be nice to replace the battery. that would probably make it a larger device, less compact, and might even raise the price as far as that's concerned. So there's always trade-offs. But I appreciate that they have the recycle process as part of this because this disposable device that ends up becoming e-waste, that would be kind of a shameful thing.

8:20And hackable, too. So you can maybe discover things it's good at that nobody even imagined when they first put it out there. Like the Amazon buttons that you press and then it orders a box of cereal? You can have that on your finger. Yes, you could. I was thinking more taking advantage of the play-pause music so I don't have to lift my hand all the way up to my earbuds to pause things when I'm walking. It's such a pain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. In fact, one of these listeners probably paid for this ring that we just bought. So big thanks to one of you. You can decide who you are.

9:00Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin, Jeff Wilkes, and a couple of overdue thank yous to Chris and Joe, who each gave us a raise. Thank you for that, Chris and Joe. We very, very much appreciate that. Thank you. Appreciate it. There's a lot more we need to know today, so let's get to the briefs. Yeah, the other big news today, President of the United States said on social media Monday, which is different than this actually being enacted, but everybody seems to be taking it seriously, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 GPUs to companies in China. Those companies have to be vetted by the U.S.

9:37Department of Commerce. And if you're like just NVIDIA, no, President indicated that similar policies will be created for AMD, Intel and other U.S. companies. the president said 25 of the sales would be paid to the u.s now previously there was a deal for the h20s that would have 15 that never really materialized so we'll see how this works but 25 of the sales go to the u.s uh the h200 of course if you're like wait what's the difference between the h20 and the h200 uh one more zero means it's a top tier data center chip uh it has been surpassed by the new blackwell based b200 chips so this is the second best chip nvidia sells, which that kind of makes it make sense, right?

10:17The United States is like, okay, you can have our second best chip because that one's kind of old. The B200s will not be allowed to be sold to China, but the H200 will. The US began prohibiting exports of high-end ships to China in October 2022, and the H200 launched in Q2 2024. So it's almost two years old, a year and a half and it's never been allowed to be sold to Chinese companies. Financial Times reports that China's National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology are considering restricting buying it on their side, putting in an approval process, where basically a company would have to show that there is no domestic chip that could meet their needs, and so they have to buy the H-200.

11:04So they're going to allow people to buy the H-200, but they're going to make them file some paperwork first. I will fully admit sometimes this story around the chips going to China and everything takes me into territory that I'm either uncomfortable talking about. I can't tell what it is, uncomfortable or incapable. There's something about it that is just kind of confusing to me. What is it that you find confusing about it? I don't know. I realize that it has something it has deeply has something to do with just the kind of like the relationship with with China right now. And with the US, the US wanting to be dominant in AI, they continue to make these these moves, something that we're going to talk about in a couple of stories here.

11:48And I don't know, it puts me into uncomfortable territory where I'm like, God, I just don't want to get this wrong. So I find this very interesting, obviously, but I don't know that I have a whole lot of deep context to add to it. I'm just kind of like – I feel like it's a tennis match that I keep seeing hit back and forth, and it's so rapid and so constant and so important. But God, I don't know. I'm being authentic right now. This is me practicing authenticity about this story. It is an emotional topic for some people. Well, I'm not saying that that's what's going on with you necessarily, but because it involves personalities and politics.

12:28And I try to look at it as a simple economic transaction, which is the United States makes the best chips in the world. China has the best factories in the world. And both nations want to be first in generative models. and so they're using their comparative advantages to try to reach some kind of uneasy compromise of like well we need you to provide us rare earth minerals and we need you to make stuff still then you know until we get a more diverse supply chain so okay we'll sell you the h200s and so you can give us the rare earth minerals and and ease up on factories and then that's good for our company nvidia because they make money uh but we don't want you using our best chip because that might give you too much of an advantage in the race.

13:18And China, likewise, saying, well, we want to make a domestic chip industry so that we don't have to rely on you and that we can race ahead. And so, yeah, it's not a simple relationship. No, it's really not. One thing that comes to mind while you're saying, thank you, because you're bringing context for me as well as everyone listening. So I appreciate that, Tom. I learn a lot from you. Is the reliance inside of China on Huawei's technology. That's another aspect of this. If Chinese companies really do rely upon the NVIDIA kind of import chip, how does that impact Huawei's efforts in the country as well?

13:57Yeah. And you're seeing people argue this both ways. NVIDIA has been saying, you're just going to speed up China's chip development if you deprive them of our chips. Let them be dependent on us. And it looks like that argument has swayed the day today. But there are others already saying, if you let them use these good chips, they'll get ahead of us in other places and it'll give them the time to make their domestic chip business good enough that they won't need to buy from us. You're helping them out. And only time will tell which of those arguments is the more accurate one. Yeah, indeed. Well, thank you, Tom.

14:34Thank you for spelling that out for me. I appreciate it. Now, something I feel a little bit more comfortable with because I am a parent and I do have children that use social media. Reddit is implementing stricter default protections for users, it believes, are under the age of 18 worldwide. The changes that they're talking about here limit direct messaging capabilities, places limits on personalized ads, just a few of the changes. Reddit will require Australian users to provide birth dates and also run age prediction models, something we continue to hear more and more about. All of this is in response to Australia's new ban on social media use by children under the age of 16 taking place on Wednesday, which, by the way, at the time of this recording, it is Wednesday in Australia.

15:25Feels like it's the future because it's Tuesday here. So essentially, that means right now the ban carries fines up to forty nine point five million Australian dollars for social media services that don't comply. So, yeah, Reddit is also arguing, by the way, that these laws are, they say, arbitrary, considering the fact that most of its user base is adult. But I don't know. This kind of sets the stage for what something like this might look like on a broader scale. Are we facing a possible moment here in the US where laws like this or rules like this come into play? Social media companies might be being required to really clamp down on their age verification systems.

16:12We're seeing a lot of this right now. Australia is just kind of like making it happen, I suppose. And it's interesting to kind of watch what the ripple effects will be on social media. Yeah, this is going to be a really interesting test case for the entire world. There's a lot of age gating happening. In the United States, they're doing it with porn. In the European Union, they're experimenting it with protecting children in various regions. What's interesting is, you know, you said social media, and that's broadly true. But this law, the Australian parliament, the ministry has determined this law does not apply to messengers.

16:51It doesn't apply to WhatsApp, doesn't apply to Steam or Steam chat, doesn't apply to Pinterest, doesn't apply to GitHub or Discord or Roblox. So where they're trying to draw the line is it's not the kids can't use social media. It's that they can't have an account in a way that the ministry has determined would be harmful. So if you're on Snapchat or Threads or TikTok or Instagram, you might get harassed. It's not that you won't get harassed on Discord. It's just that you are less exposed to the general populace on Discord. You join a server and you message with direct people. And even more so WhatsApp and Messenger or even Lego or something.

17:34You know, these are either platforms that have already some kind of strong child control like Roblox does. You could argue that's not strong enough, but at least they have it. Right. Sure. And it's interesting to see where they're drawing the line and then what problems start to happen on the platforms that aren't affected by this. And also what problems happen on the platforms that are affected. because I don't know if you have noticed this with your own children, Jason, but children seem to be good about getting around rules sometimes. They're very smart. Kids are very smart. Much, much smarter than a lot of people give them credit for, and especially with technology.

18:12Heck, you and I, we were young once as well, and we were young and into technology. Let me just tell you, I got into plenty of trouble because I was a smart kid with technology. My parents had no clue. So, yeah, I give kids a lot of credit here. I think that's one of the big things here is like, okay, you can do what you want. Kids are probably going to figure out some way around it. Even parents, some of the stuff that I was reading about this, some parents are like, I'm teaching my kids now how to use VPN because some of their friends have been gone through the age verification process and been verified as 18, even though they're not.

18:48And my kid has not. And so now she's being left out of the social circle conversation and all this kind of stuff. It has cascading impacts all over the place, and no system is perfect, obviously. It's very interesting to see what the effects of the Australia ban are going to actually be. Yeah. And just one last little button for someone, because I know someone has this question. If you lose your account now because you're younger than 16, when you turn 16, theoretically, you can get it back. They're keeping the accounts. They're just not letting you access them until you can prove that you're 16.

19:24Okay, then. Yeah. And I can't wait for the spate of stories. I'm sure it's actually not going to be that widespread, but there are going to be some people who are older than 16 who are going to get labeled younger than 16 and be upset about this. U.S. Department of Defense has chosen Alphabet's Gemini as its official provider of generative models to military and civilian employees. It is called GenAI.mil. That's where Gemini will live. This is part of what the DoD says is an AI-driven culture change that will dominate the digital battlefield for years to come. Google already provides models for the Navy, Air Force, and the U.S.

20:02Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit. Yeah, and this isn't just Google in a position like this. OpenAI, XAI, Anthropic have all been granted similar awards. You mean awarded similar contracts, not given awards. Right, yeah. They didn't get any medals that I know of. But yeah, awarded similar contracts. But I can definitely - This is a big get, which is why it's making bigger news today. Yeah, and I can see a lot of people having a visceral reaction to this, like, oh, Gemini, getting in with the Department of Defense and all that kind of stuff. OpenAI wanted this contract, honestly. So this is another big win for Alphabet in that space as well.

20:49That's true. At a time where Alphabet's getting a lot of wins as far as AI is concerned. Public reaction, that's what I'm curious about this, how that applies to this. uh open ai speaking of open ai anthropic and block are forming the agentic ai foundation and open source group looking to define shared technical standards around ai agents so they're looking to improve interoperability tools access platform compatibility across companies it's really going to focus on building common apis for everyone to use protocols for agents that act on the user's behalf, which is what agents do. Companies are also moving ownership of some of their agentic tech into the foundation.

21:33I think this is interesting. Anthropics Model Context Protocol, MCP, if you've heard of it, that's moving into the foundation. OpenAI is agents.md also. And the goal there is to, they say, allow others to contribute to the ongoing development of those tools to open them up. And yeah, I think what they're signaling here is the idea or the desire to kind of take a more collaborative approach when it comes to these agents so that developers, so that enterprises can actually lean into them without feeling like they're locking themselves into a single ecosystem. And I think at the core of it, of course, this is a power play, right?

22:18It feels so altruistic to be like, here, Let's open it up. But it does also kind of put them into a position to influence and kind of control how all this gets developed together. I mean, I think we make a mistake when we try to anthropomorphize these kinds of decisions by companies of like, oh, they're doing it because they're greedy or they're doing it because they're altruistic. Right. And the fact is, it's neither. Standards get formed in places where companies who are all self-interested, right? They all want to win. That's what competition is. when companies realize that none of them are going to win if they don't create a playing field.

23:01And that's when you get things like USB or the internet. And so it really is interesting to see that agents are one of the places where these companies are like, ah, you know what? If we don't interoperate, these agents don't work as well. And if we want to unlock the value of our own agent, we're going to have to have interoperation with other agents out there because I think what this says is they realize one agent isn't going to win, right? You're going to have agents that are good at different things. So you want the agents to work together through MCP and then you will try to make the best agent in a certain place, whereas your competitor might make it in another place and then you both win.

23:42Yeah. The beauty of a good agent is that it does the thing wherever it has to do it, or however it needs to. It has the ability, the access, the control, whatever, to do the thing that the user wants it to do. And you get there through carving out a common system, let's say, so that they can kind of speak the right language together and not have to stumble through it. And then as a user, we end up dissatisfied with the results. So yeah, you're right. I think this is also a way to get ahead of possible regulatory conflict down the road as well. Self-regulate before you get government regulated.

24:25Absolutely. Yeah. All right. And boy, we got a lot of quick headlines here to go through. Just good stuff to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Mistral launched its heavyweight open source DevStrawl 2 coding model along with Mistral Vibe, a command line interface with natural language code automation, code search, version control, and command execution. The latest Android Canary build revealed that Google and Apple have been working together on native tools to make switching between platforms easier for users. So they're working together on this. More data types are going to be supported for transfer as a result of the changes, which start in Android Canary 25.12 on Pixel and a future iOS 26 developer beta.

25:05Another example of what we were just talking about, where they're like, you know what, But we both lose if we don't cooperate. Maybe we should do that. Google's rolling out an extended repair and replacement program up to three years to address issues with some of its Pixel 9 Pro and XL smartphones suffering from a vertical line that appears through the display. Google also adding the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but did not say why it included that one. wiki media has chosen former u.s ambassador to china oh sorry to chile uh bernadette mahan as its new ceo taking the place of mariana iskander starting january 20th 2026 samsung's one ui 8.5 public beta is out uh it has improved image generation tools enhanced aura cast integration come on companies use aura cast it's pretty cool uh fully customizable quick panel design with a liquid glass transparency effect and the ability to share storage with other devices.

26:02Nice. Can't wait to use that. Spotify rolling out music videos to US and Canadian premium subscribers after a pretty long beta that launched overseas early last year. Users are going to now see a switch to video option when you're listening to a song. You can switch back to audio if you want as well. Yeah, that's a long one coming. Apple Music and others have had that, obviously, YouTube. Thanks to Tadpool in the DTNS subreddit for pointing out this one, a rediscovered classic build of macOS 7.6 and 8.0 for Chirp, that's CHRP, Common Hardware Reference Platform, has been found. And it lets users boot everything from System 7 through 9.2.2 directly on the Mac Mini G4, which you couldn't do before, opening the door for some interesting retro computing exploration.

26:52It will not work on Intel or Apple Silicon Max. This is for the power PC. And I suspect Steve Jobs is spitting it in his grave. But that's super cool, though. I love it. Folks, would you like to be on DTNS? We're doing a special show on Wednesday, December 24th at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, where we're going to share the tech we want for the holidays or maybe reminisce about tech we've gotten in the past. And we're inviting the listeners to be part of the episode. You can either pre-record something or possibly, in some cases, even join us live. Find out more at dailytechnewsshow.com slash LCH.

27:33We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Yesterday was a big news day, and today Mike in Dusty Doha has a thought on the ever-complex Netflix WBD acquisition that we spoke. Yes. He says, Hi, Tom. I enjoyed the conversation about what the implications are for the Netflix-HBO merger. Because for some people, Warner, they're like, I don't care about anything but the HBO part. Mike says, You mentioned that they might assuage regulators by keeping the streaming services separate. As someone who pays for both, I would love to pay $5 more for Netflix per month than have a separate HBO experience.

28:11One of my biggest complaints about But HBO's current experience is their tendency to take down their legacy content rather than being overwhelmed. Setting up my new TV and soundbar last year, I went to stream The Matrix to test it. And nope, only Matrix 4 was there. Old IP owned by Warner Brothers like Westworld has similarly been memory hold. I strongly prefer the Netflix strategy of keeping everything they have the rights for on their service and hope that HBO and WB Discovery content all gets folded into it. Yeah, I'd be curious to see that, too. I'd definitely explore that. What are your thoughts on this?

28:45I'm sorry I didn't listen to this. What Ted Sarandos has been saying is that they plan to keep HBO running separately. It's not exactly the words he's used. He's very hedged his bets because I don't think they've really decided, honestly, what approach they're going to take. But I'm going to guess that they are going to assuage regulators who think you're removing a competitor from the marketplace by saying, no, people will be able to choose between Netflix and HBO if they want. I'm guessing they do a lot of changes to HBO. And I'm guessing to Mike's point, a lot of HBO content will show up on Netflix.

29:17And Netflix does, they, Netflix will license out content or Netflix will remove content because they, because they, they will remove content because they lose the license to it, but they keep their own content. I wonder though, if they will continue to do that when they have a production arm, that's making content for other people. And that situation, it might behoove them to finally say, well, no, we can window some licenses out there. But yeah, it's all left to be decided. And who knows? Paramount's hostile takeover might win. And then all of this goes into Paramount Plus. And they merge all that together.

29:58So we'll see. Wow. What a crazy time for media right now. Fascinating stuff. Well, what are you thinking about? If you've got insight into a story, you can share it with us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Yes, big thanks to Mike in Dusty Doha for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business, folks. Become a patron if you haven't already. Patreon.com slash DTNS.

30:27Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. the dtns family of podcasts helping each other understand