Veo 3 image-to-video comes to Gemini - DTNSB 5057

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. In a world where AI is changing every role in every industry, knowing who actually has deep expertise matters more than ever.

0:36Upwork connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records so you can hire with confidence. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise so you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI-powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers matched to your goals in under six hours. No endless searching required. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support.

1:15It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Upwork dot com. Meet Amazon Ads rising star Daryl Spencer, who set out to redefine men's self-care with his brand Crown Skin. Amazon Ads helped him grow. I walked away from big tech to build a luxury brand in a category that no one was paying attention to. With the help of Amazon Ads, I'm reaching relevant audiences and competing with the biggest names in men's grooming. We've scaled to over$500 ,000 in monthly revenue.

1:53Watch Crown Skin's story at advertising.amazon.com slash rising-stars.

2:23advisor, or real estate agent, HeyGen helps you create consistent, professional video content without making content creation your full-time job. It's rated the number one AI video platform for small business on G2, features some of the industry's most realistic AI avatars, is trusted by more than 30 million people and 85 % of the Fortune 100, and supports over 175 languages, so you can communicate with audiences around the world. Here's the wild part. Record yourself for just 15 seconds, and HeyGen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand, so you can post everywhere your audience is, as yourself, without filming every time.

3:00Your first three videos are free at heygen.com slash pod. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-O-D. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 10th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other understand. Today, Dr. Nikki tells us about Colossus' plans to genetically engineer fowl, and VO3 brings image to video to Gemini. Yeah, it does. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Windwet Dow. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. Yes, Google announced this morning a new feature for its Gemini VO3 platform coming to users who are paying.

3:44I'll talk about that in a second. It allows users to turn still images into eight second 720p video clips. Of course, you get the sound as well generated and you can prompt around that from within the Gemini app on the web. Now, sometime within the next week, Google says that they expect to roll out this capability to iOS and Android. So I'm assuming that means it's going to appear in the Gemini app on your smartphone. The tool is currently available to paid Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers. Paid users will have three generations per day, and there is no rollover on unused credits. So if you don't use them, it's not like the next day you have six.

4:28You just get three per day. All content created this way is going to show visible VO watermark down in the bottom right corner. And there will also be an invisible SynthID digital watermark to protect on the back end. Google has not announced whether it will bring this capability to free users at this time, although I could totally see it. Google's also shared that users have created more than 40 million videos within the Gemini app and the Flow tool where this feature actually premiered seven weeks ago. And then our mutual friend, our friend Ron Richards on the Android Faithful podcast, got an early peek at this new feature.

5:07He actually wrote about it, and that went live this morning on the Android Faithful site. He took photos from his time yesterday's Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, turned them into full-blown video clips. I don't know if you had a chance to see them, but some interesting stuff there. What do you think about this capability? It's okay. So it's, I'll say it's scary good. It's scary good. Scary good. Scary good. Some of them were amazing. And to be honest, if you had not told me the context of where this image came from, where I didn't see the modern mark, I'd be blown away. just because i think that you know they at least the ones that we so there's they're short clips which helps and yeah eight seconds is is is plenty is is not enough time for you to kind of really look around like if you the more i look at them the more i can see the little edges but i mean also they're kind of fantastical clips i think is ron mind sharing what but yeah one was like a plate of ribs that he had made just an innocuous like picture of ribs and then all of sudden this little green alien comes over and picks up one of the ribs and eats them.

6:08And it's, it's kind of wild. Like I would never have guessed that it was again, AI generated other than the fact that it was a little green alien. And it gets these weird little details, correct. Like the alien picked up the rib and there was like a sauce stain underneath the ribbon. Again, this was an still image that did not exist. Like there was no information, you know, directly given in. So I think it's scary. Good. It's absolutely fascinating. And I think I just went through some of the other clips as well before we started rolling. And it's, it's incredible. I'm very thankful for the watermark because this is, I mean, I'm blown away.

6:42I don't even know what else to say other than, wow. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, nothing that I've seen that I'm like, oh my goodness, that's bending reality to the point to where, you know, I'm, let me just say this. I'm not afraid of what this means about anything yet. I think a lot of people jump to the, oh my goodness, what is this going to do for misinformation and blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm firmly of the belief that like, we've always had misinformation. We've always had tools to fake reality. And this is just another extension of that. Sure. There's a scale issue here. You know, it's a different scale, but I mean, if you take any of these clips and like I took them and put them on my large screen monitor and full screen them, A, they're 720p.

7:26So they don't look really that great once you do that. But B, you start to really see the details when you see it on the small screen that things look really believable and hard to discern. Once you blow it up, you start to see all of those details kind of creep in that really are the true tale or tell that it is it is generated. Maybe there's a time somewhere down the line where where I get worried. But at this stage, like at this stage, I could almost see something like this. Eventually, Google just kind of putting it into the Google Photos app and saying, well, and now it's another tool. Turn any of your images in your Google Photos library into a motion.

8:04Like, couldn't you just see that? Like, I feel like it's begging to happen inside of Google Photos. Yeah. I mean, they already do the cinematic thing where they take a flat image and they apply some filters to kind of, you know, almost do like a push in or something like that. But I mean, I, and I agree. I know I said scary good, but yeah, like you keep watching. It's like, oh, you can kind of see where it isn't able to kind of fill in, in a very realistic way. it's just kind of amazing but i mean the fact that that there were 40 million videos created does show that okay this is good enough and people people like it enough that they kind of mess around with it i'm curious about like extended and actual like use like this still feels like a novelty or like maybe every occasionally you'll find an interesting just like magic eraser and some of the other things that we've talked about which a little more i think grounded and i would i would say yeah sure that makes a lot of sense someone misses a picture the group picture let's splice them in i kind of say that out loud and just um but you know i it is interesting um i think it's more a flex of capability than anything else i do wonder and jason you're way you you're definitely much more of an expert on this than i am um on ai in general these days i and i i feel remiss if i didn't bring up that you know um maybe like even the environmental aspect because now as we're getting into that like kind of a place where people are using this more often.

9:25And I know one of the things that people tend to like tend to cite as a negative of this new generation of generative AI is kind of like the environmental impacts in terms of like energy and stuff. Do we need to worry about that with 40 million videos being generated? Like, are you, are you aware of like, I don't know what this actually means for that side of this? Do I know what it translates to exactly? I know that it's a broad, yeah. I know that there's broad impact. And I know that depending on who you talk to about this, there's either, you know, steep concern or absolutely no concern whatsoever, because check out the cool thing that it does.

10:02You know, I know that it's, you know, I'm pretty certain that it's not the best thing for our environment when we're using as much energy as it requires for these things. Maybe there's a tiny sliver of solace in the fact that things like this and some of the features that we're going to talk about later in this show that are coming to other competing platforms are behind a, in some cases, very steep paywall because maybe that kind of drives the kind of user base down. But we've also noticed in AI that a lot of these features are paid for slash expensive slashed heavily throttled in the beginning.

10:39And then over time, they become table stakes and everybody has access to it. And that's like, I wouldn't be surprised if this is kind of heading in that direction eventually, as they all are. They all continue to push each other further and further. And what does that do on a wide scale to the environmental impact of these things? I think you're right. I think it does have a negative impact and it's certainly something to pay close attention to. I also think there's a lot of people in very important places kind of waving the magic wand, you know, waving their hand over the air and saying, that's not the thing you should be paying attention to.

11:11You should be paying attention to the cool things that this does for your productivity, for, you know, for your business, running your business more effectively. You know, there's a lot of misdirection going on around that. That's a really fair point. Thanks for chipping that in. Because I think sometimes like, especially like as an engineer, I was trying to figure out all the impacts. And so I appreciate that perspective. But I mean, for what it's worth, it's pretty cool if you want a cute, cute little eight second clip. So. That's interesting. Well, DT Nest is made possible by you, the listener.

11:45we want to take time to thank Tim Deputy, Brandon Brooks, and Joni Hernandez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's up, patrons? 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. For example, ChatGPT work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs. You stay in control reviewing the draft and deciding what moves forward.

12:25Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. Here's how it works. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then, it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part, Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use.

12:58No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting, with superpowers. You get to actually listen instead of frantically typing every word, and still walk away knowing exactly what was decided, Who's doing what? And what comes next? My first time using it was in a meeting that had a lot of moving parts and was pretty technical. I couldn't believe how organized and complete Granola's notes were. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free. Just head to granola.ai slash dailytech. That's granola.ai slash dailytech to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai slash dailytech.

13:36This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Cozy season is ahead and you'll be spending way more time inside. Is your home ready? Don't worry.

14:11With Wayfair, you can upgrade your space without breaking the bank. Score up to 70 % off during their Labor Day clearance on furniture, area rugs, mattresses, and more. Plus, surprise flash deals you can't miss. Whether it's one room or the whole house, Wayfair has pieces for every style and budget. Shop Wayfair's Labor Day clearance now through September 7th at Wayfair.com. Way fair, every style, every home. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W.

14:50Walden's online programs are designed for working professionals like you. You'll gain hands-on skills to take on real-world challenges and succeed. Your future is waiting, and Walden is here to help you achieve it. Take the first step to make your impact. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by Chev.

15:14All right, there's more we need to know today. Let's get into the briefs. Wow, the one big thing missing from yesterday's Samsung Unpacked event was any sort of official mention of the company's rumored tri-fold smartphone. TM Rowe, head of Samsung's device experience division, told the Korea Times that the company expects to launch that device sometime later this year. He acknowledged that a final name hasn't been picked yet and the company is focusing on perfecting the product. Another Samsung executive told Android Authority that the company is looking deeply into whether there is demand for the new form factor and what its purpose might be in the marketplace.

15:56Yeah. I mean, Samsung's had this concept for quite a while. This is not the first year that we've heard about a trifold. In fact, earlier this year, it was in Barcelona, Mobile World Congress, and Samsung had their trifold prototype out. They've been talking about it for a handful of years. I'm sure they've done a lot of looking into these kind of things when it comes to that form factor since they've been working on it for so long. So I'd be surprised if they haven't figured that, you know, there is some sort of demand for this. I don't know how steep the demand would be, but I think it's interesting that they're acknowledging it head on and basically saying, yeah, you know what, later this year, you're probably going to see it.

16:36And I don't know, I'm a fan of unique form factors. That would be very interesting to see. I'm looking forward to it. I do think it's a really great point, though, that they do point that out. And I think whenever I mention it or show it to other people in the mobile space, they're like, that's great, But when would you use that? Or who's buying that, I think, is the number one thing. And especially with the price point, since we already kind of are, I think there's some people pushing the limit of pricing and what's reasonable for even high-end phones. Trifold's obviously just a whole other class of cost.

17:09So, yeah, no, I think that's really unique that they did. We're showing their hand a little bit on their strategy. And it's really fair. And I think it kind of makes sense. It actually gives me a little more, I don't know. It makes me feel like, okay, they're thinking about this and maybe it won't just be a LARC or a niche, a super, not that folks aren't niche already, but a super, super niche product. Yeah. I have a feeling it'll be a super, super niche product. It will be. It will be. But whether they actually decide to go into that niche. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I'm here for it. Elon Musk and crew unveiled Grok 4, a new version of XAI's controversial AI model.

17:44has been trained on the company's Colossus supercomputer. The new model promises, they say, scientist-grade reasoning, okay, and introduces multimodal capabilities that handle text and images with video coming in a future release. Features Grok4 code for developers, real-time web access via deep search, a voice assistant, of course. Grok4 is also being tuned to understand internet memes and slang with high accuracy. So that's going to be real interesting when you're using Twitter X. It already is, but things are going to get more interesting, let's say. Musk also announced the launch of Super Grok Heavy, a$300 per month AI subscription plan.

18:28So this is kind of what I was talking about earlier, right? Like you price it high enough. I don't know many people who are going to pay$300 a month for a subscription plan. I know I'm not. And that probably limits the amount of people using the really power-hungry version of these models. The multi-agent version of Grok unleashes many agents, a bunch of agents to work on a single problem simultaneously. They compare that work at the other end of that. And then XAI claims it outperformed Gemini 2.5 Pro by an order of magnitude. The upgraded service is also going to eventually offer a video generation model, as we're talking about, and an AI coding model in the coming months.

19:07All right. Well, there are still people behind AI, obviously. And we already knew that Apple lost Rooming Pang, leader of Apple's AI models team, to Meta for an exorbitant amount of money. Now, Bloomberg has sources detailing that Pang accepted an offer in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars over a several year period. Apple reportedly didn't offer to match the offer, especially considering the fact the amount would surpass what its CEO, Tim Cook, earns. Neither Meta nor Apple responded for comment. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this yesterday on the AI Inside podcast, me and my co-host Jeff Jarvis.

19:45And Jeff put it really succinctly and accurately, I think. He said, this all sounds incredibly bubbly. when you're paying hundreds of millions of dollars to, you know, to a single engineer over the course of a number of years for a single project that you're working on tied to a technology that everybody in technology is going gaga over right now feels a little bit like a bubble. Obviously, time will tell, but I can't. It's hard for me to imagine that any one person is worth that much money? And especially someone I'd like, don't get me wrong. Rumeng is obviously incredibly smart, right? I'm not saying that he's not, but is anyone really worth that much money?

20:34What does Rumeng have that a bunch of other people for far less money couldn't also provide? I don't know. It's just weird to me. That's what I'm going to say. I am definitely not an engineer on the scale of Romang at all. So I want to say that clearly. But I have to agree with you. As someone who's just a normal person and already understands maybe how many people are that smart, I agree with you. And also always like, investing in a person like that obviously is a long-term bet. I mean, also given Apple's placement right now in the AI space, I just, it just, when are they going to make that?

21:13How and when are they going to recoup the expenses of bringing on this obviously very talented but singular person as you said it uh yeah the math the the math is just so weird uh so i will defer to jeff on this that it does seem a little bubbly and not in the delightful uh champagne anyway like champagne sort of way i mean there's probably some i bet rooming uh sees it in a champagne sort of way he was probably bathing in a bathtub of champagne uh yeah it is It is a little interesting. I mean, I think at the end of the day, Meta, you know, I keep saying this, Meta has mountains of money to throw up problems.

21:52I think all these big, big tech companies do right now. None of them wants to be left behind. Zuckerberg sees this super intelligence jump as critically important. And so maybe at the end of the day, it kind of doesn't matter if one person is worth that amount. If you have the money to spend it, all that matters is, can we get the people we really want? Period. End of story. and you give someone a level of like an order of magnitude more money than they could even imagine, you're probably going to get them. The question is, does the strategy end up working for Meta? Do they actually achieve this super intelligence point that they're suddenly prioritizing?

22:34And is that great for their business? Does it end up being worth it when you're spending that much money? It means to be seen. I wonder if it's almost, sorry, just one more question. I wonder if it's almost like a marketing thing, you know, like, I mean, not the same industry at all, but, you know, film companies will spend millions of dollars just to advertise a movie. You know, that's just part of the budget, a huge part of the budget, even though it feels like not a substantive part. I almost wonder at this point, because the AI landscape is so full of everybody doing all sorts of things that if anything else, just the attention and the fact that, hey, we're here, we're making big moves.

23:07Check our, you know, like we're a big player here is part of that as well. And maybe that is, I don't know, as meta goes, a cheap way of, it's not cheap, it's not cheap, but an interesting, a good investment in getting attention. Yeah, they're getting a lot of attention. I'll say that. Garmin smartwatches now provide Google Maps support on their watches, synced up to the Maps app on Android devices. Sorry, iOS is currently unsupported. We'll see if that changes sometime soon. The Google Maps app needs to be installed from Garmin's Connect IQ store. Once run, the watch will sync with the app on your smartphone, your Android smartphone, and then it will vibrate, you know, show the directions.

23:48It'll also vibrate for every new direction that comes up on a given route. Garmin says that fitness tracking capabilities will continue to work uninterrupted while Google Maps is running in the background on those devices. This might be a big game changer for them. I've talked to multiple people that use Garmin that this is kind of a big deal, especially folks that you know cycle or that you know and apparently even like um i'm gonna get this wrong um motor sports like going to the track are actually physically heavy um exercises so big game changer for some people so good on you garmin okay all right well do you remember when gamestop made headlines during the nintendo switch to launch week when employees stapled receipts to the boxes of soul consoles that then rendered the devices inside damage as a result of that staple going in and poking the screen well gamestop has given replacement units to the impacted buyers yay and is going one step further by auctioning off the stapler that caused the chaos in the first place proceeds for the auction will be directed to the children's miracle network hospitals the top bid on ebay at the time of this recording sits around 110 000 but don't you worry You will not just get the stapler.

24:58You'll also win the first fully boxed Switch 2 that was damaged by it. The auction ends next Wednesday. Wow. $110 ,000 right now with like a week to go on this thing. And when I read this, I couldn't help but think. Somewhere out there in the world, there is like at least one person who is such a stapler fan that they're like, I've got to have this one. I've got to have Milton's red swing line stapler from office space, you know, just like it's worth it for me to have these two precious stapler items in my collection. I love it. No, that's I couldn't. That's the only thing I could think of was was of office space.

25:42Of course. How can you how can you even talk about staplers anymore and not think about office space? And now I know what I'm watching this evening. Yes. Yes. Open AI is reportedly working on a new browser to challenge Google Chrome. This is according to Reuters sources. The browser, which aims to keep web browsing locked into a chat style experience, so maybe less of a web browser the way you're used to, more of a chat integrated web browsing thing, might launch in the coming weeks, according to those sources. Just yesterday, just as a quick reminder and related note, Perplexity had launched its agent-based browser Comet, applying further pressure on Google, which is really kind of I think the bigger picture here is that Google has dominated the browser space for such a long time.

26:29It's so deeply integrated into its business model and the way it does things. And now we're kind of venturing into this realm where these AI companies think that they can offer a browser that does things different, that actually has the potential or the power to pull users away from Chrome and into theirs. Obviously, time will tell. I'm not entirely convinced. But interesting, nonetheless, this is yet another trend happening right now. All right. Well, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that a new version of the Vision Pro could arrive sometime this year. And when it does, expect an updated Apple M4 processor to be inside with improvements to the headset's image signal processor and video encoding and decoding capabilities.

27:16Apple is also working to make the headband more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. Don't expect major changes to the device design, though the use of the M4 chip could signal a marginal drop in price for the expensive headset. Gurman says a broader redesign of the Vision Pro could come sometime later in 2027 with significant weight reductions. Okay. Curious to see where that lands. I mean, this is an expensive headset, no matter how you slice it. So maybe the use of the M4 and the reason that they say could signal a marginal drop is because the M4 chip was in, you know, certain Apple laptops as of last year that have dropped in price.

27:54So it's possible that using that in the headset might actually lower the price. And if it did that, it probably wouldn't be drastically. But hey, when a device costs more than$3 ,000, any bid is a savings, let's be honest. So Major League Baseball will use its automated ball strike system as a challenge option during the All-Star Game. This gives team pitchers, catchers, and hitters a total of two attempts during the game. So they only get two tries throughout the entire game, each team, to contest an umpire's call with the help of computer vision technology. And not only that, they have to do it immediately.

28:30There can't be any deliberation. It's like the batter would have to tap his helmet immediately after the call in order for it to take. If the ABS system agrees with the umpire's call, the challenge is failed. If the system determines a different call than the umpire called, the team is able to accept that new ruling. The MLB has not committed to making this system permanent for regular season games. But you have to imagine like this is a pretty big kind of area or space to test it out in aside from kind of like preseason games that I think they had tested this out with before. So maybe they're, you know, they're taking it to the big, literally to the big leagues to put it to the test, see how people react to it and see how accurate it is.

29:15All right. Well, those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper. What do Jurassic Park and Lord of the Rings have in common other than a really entertaining evening with popcorn and soft drinks? A colossal bad handle on genetic engineering. And Dr. Nikki has the explanation. Dr. Nikki, welcome back. Hello. Colossal made the news, so we have to talk about it. It's what the people expect. What have they done now? It's what the people want. Yes, Colossal has had another press release. I'm not sure there's any data behind it, but we'll tell you what it means. They claim they want to bring back the extinct giant moa.

29:56It's a huge bird that's endemic to New Zealand, or it was at least before it got hunted to extinction about 600 years ago. And they were about 12 feet tall. So they look like a giant, terrifying emu. I don't know why you would want to bring them back, but they do. Well, apparently people are fascinated with these things. In fact, there is some kind of connection to Lord of the Rings. Yeah. So Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings, is also a native New Zealander. And he loves moa. And he has the world's largest private collection of moa bones, having about 400 of them. and he got in league with Colossal and has contributed$15 million to funding the project.

30:38Yeah, he basically was like, every kid is fascinated with these birds growing up in New Zealand. So, you know. Which I understand. Yeah, I totally get that. Now they used a similar tactic when we talked about them using George R. Martin to fund the dire wolf project. Yeah, and the connection that they made to Game of Thrones. so right and there's already some like red flags going off in my head uh first of all i want to talk about private fossil collections so peter jackson does whatever he wants but generally for science it's better to have fossils in museums so that then researchers can study them and like know where they are and how many we have and since the moe is a pretty rare specimen having that many bones in a private collection is kind of problematic um and i think it prevents doing research on them unless you have a lot of money um i think the reason in part that colossal um kind of paired up with with um peter jackson aside from the collection and obviously the press release notoriety and stuff like that is that it's illegal to export moa bones from new zealand and so i think they have to just go on site and work there to do the work they want to do and they're also partnering with a local research center which is good for the maori um unsure how this is going to unfold though.

31:58I hope, you know, as usual, they tend to promise more than they deliver. So yeah. So, so, but in this, in this particular part of it, everything's on the up and up. It's not like Peter Jackson illegally collected the bones. It's legal for him to collect the ones that aren't on public land. Right. Yeah. So, so he didn't break the law. It may be grumpy. Right. And they're also working with a public research Maori, like you said, so that, that's good that part i like yeah where's the moa yeah so you know we don't have a moa alive yet the project is in very very early stages they still made a press release about it um but they haven't even got to the first step which is identifying bones that are well preserved where they can extract dna so there's that then if they're able to do that part the final goal would be to compare the MOA DNA to other closely related living species like the emu or the tinamu and see what the differences are.

32:57So there's a lot of steps for like that's two sentences, but that's a lot of actual like I can almost do the analysis after we've talked about it. This reminds me of the other things we've talked about. Yeah, right. So you've heard us cover their previous projects on the woolly mammoth and these quote unquote direwolves where they did actually. the cool part is they did actually extract ancient DNA. They did compare it and look for things that were different. We covered that part. And then, you know, the resulting thing they did is they took things that they thought looked different and changed them in these wolves, but that wasn't really the actual genes.

33:32The thing is here, birds are a little bit different and probably a little bit harder since the bird embryos are developing inside an egg. So there's that whole egg aspect that you have to be able to reconstruct as well. I'm assuming they want their Jurassic Park moment where, you know, it cracks out of the egg. That's going to be pretty good footage, right? So we'll see. That's true. If they can make that happen, that would be pretty cool. But I get the sense that scientists are always skeptical about Colossal. Is there anything different about this one? Not really. As usual, this looks like right now just a publicity stunt with no real evidence that anything's happened yet.

34:08And because of Colossal's previous work, researchers are really not excited about the idea of this de-extincting anything, really because it pulls focus from endangered species that are currently extant and alive and that actually could use those$15 million to maybe not go extinct in the first place. So it's controversial. And you get to hear all the updates from us. So we'll just keep covering it. Yeah, I mean, this company basically has a good template for getting people interested in them, which I assume they can turn into funding and which is why they continue to do it. They're worth a lot of money now.

34:46But like find cool thing that people are excited about. In this case, it's, you know, people who grew up in New Zealand and people growing up in New Zealand who are excited about the MOA. And then claim you can extract their DNA, which you probably can. Like that part isn't that controversial. Like you could be able to do it. but then the thing is it hasn't been done yet so right yeah right yes yeah so i don't know like ancient dna is really hard and it really depends on how well the bones are preserved and all of that the thing is like if no one's done it yet it i don't know how well it's preserved it could be that the fact that there's this private collection and researchers haven't had access to it that that may have stuff in it, but ancient DNA is tougher than you think.

35:35But, you know, maybe they have an in. I mean, I guess they wouldn't really be covering it if they didn't. But the next step, you're right, is the bigger problem is like de-extincting it. And then saying you're going to be able to do things that you may not be able to really do. And one of the scientists interviewed said like, this would be a super dangerous animal if they like brought it back. Like, this isn't a great idea. It's only been gone for 600 years too, right? Like that we suspect. Yeah. And it was alive like 4 ,000 years ago though. So it was live for a while. Yeah. So in the grand scheme of things, it's one of the more recent ones that they've claimed.

36:06Well, they also talked about the Dodo, which was more recent than that. Oh yeah. And we haven't heard anything about the Dodo in a while either. So I don't know. I haven't seen any flying around in LA. So I'm going to make a reference that no one in the audience will get. But no, this doesn't have to do with the band Tomorrow By Together. Yeah, I don't, sorry. I'll just leave that one there. Anyone who does get it, let me know. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. And we both can commiserate on how no one else got that joke. Hey, Dr. Nikki, where can folks find what you do? Hey, folks can find me at nicoleackermans.com.

36:42And I usually post these stories over there in text form, more or less on the same date. And I have the same handle on Blue Sky, so you can find me there too. Fantastic. Thanks, Dr. Nikki. Bye. I'll leave it to Tom to come up with a joke that nobody understands. But you know what, Tom? I love you for it. Maybe not nobody understands. Somebody did. And actually, it's probably like really potent for the few people who do. They're just like, oh my God, that's my guy right there. Pretty cool though. I mean, cool slash like you can't, I can't help but get just a slight little bit of nervousness, right?

37:20Like, cause we've seen the science fiction. We've seen the Jurassic Park. It can't help but go like, But is this a smart idea? We're playing around with things that maybe we shouldn't be playing around with. At the same time, I can nerd out on the possibility of, wow, it's pretty amazing if that is even possible, whether we should do it or not. It's so funny because the first Jurassic Park movie already made this point. And maybe it's really obvious, but, you know, so concerned about whether you could, didn't quite think about whether you should. So anyway. Yeah. I mean, we're doing the same thing with AI, right?

37:57Like how many decades have we been seeing cautionary tales in film and books and everything about like, don't create AI. We know what it leads to, death and destruction. And yet we're doing it anyways, you know? So either we're stupid or science fiction is truly that, just fiction. All right. Well, on that note, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? Well, one way to let us know is in our subreddit, submit stories and vote on them at Reddit at r slash Daily Tech News Show.

38:51presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus. Terms apply. Support comes from WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. Fed up with losing out to hidden fees when you send money abroad with your everyday bank? Choose the smart way. WISE, you can count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling. Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Download the WISE app today. T's and C's apply.

39:32We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom today. Andrew is helping us understand. Andrew writes, DTNS crew, the conversation around the Pixel 6a's battery reminded me of one of my favorite new features on Pixel phones. Charging optimizations that let you limit charging to 80 % and providing pass-through power after that. Charging from 80 to 100 % is where most of the battery wear happens. I've been using the feature on my phone since it came out, where I used to average 30 charging cycles a month, or sorry, 30 charging per month on my phone. Now I average less than 10. When I am traveling and know I'll be away from my charger for a whole day, I switch the setting back, but it's made for a much easier day since I'm not juggling unplugging and replugging, trying not to overcharge the device.

40:20Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, coincidence that this new feature is happening now when Google is battling battery health on a number of its previous smartphones? I don't know. But yes, great feature. Absolutely. Good to have it. Options are good. And again, you can choose to use it or not because some people will be like, well, why do I care? Like, I want Macs now. And you can do that. if you so choose. What are you thinking about? If you have insight into a story, share it with us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Thank you, Wyn. Big thanks to Dr. Nikki. Thanks to Andrew. So many thanks to GoRun and Tom, of course, for contributing to today's show.

41:00And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business. All you got to do is become a patron at Patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll see you tomorrow.

41:16Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

41:28This 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. Hey everyone, it's Adam, host of Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. And this episode is powered by AT &T Business.

42:05When you're building a business, momentum is everything. There's nothing worse than hitting your stride only to have a spinning loading icon bring everything to a halt. When navigating competing priorities, reliability isn't a luxury. It's a foundation. AT &T Business is built to work so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time focusing on what actually matters. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get today at business.att.com.