Xbox Handhelds are Here, But Should You Pay? - DTNS 5113

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1:42Jenn Cutter: This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 26th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories and help each other understand.

1:54Dr Niki: Today, should you eat Teflon? Before you answer, let Dr. Nikki tell you about one of the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize. And the Xbox handheld is here and it is expensive.

2:07Jenn Cutter: I'm John Merritt. I'm Jen Cutter. Let's get right into that big story. A handheld Xbox is now available for you to buy. Yay! Yay! The ROG Xbox Alley is up for pre-order for$599. You can get the Xbox Alley X for$999. Both ship on October 16th. And Jen, for you, that's$799 and$1 ,299 Canadian. I appreciate that. I'm sorry. Those are so much bigger. Weirdly, Australian, it's$799, but then like$1499. for the Ally X. Anyway, Asus makes the hardware. Microsoft provides a customized version of Windows that is optimized for running games. So things like File Explorer that really aren't as important. They're there, but they're minimized.

2:59Jenn Cutter: Both models have a seven inch HD display with a 120 hertz refresh rate. The more expensive one, the Ally X, has more RAM, more storage, and a bigger battery. The handheld plays PC versions of the games, but you use a console style controller. And to that end, Microsoft has now launched the handheld compatibility program, which will apply to future handhelds because they plan to have more than just this model. But for now, it means that games have been tested, optimized, and verified to play well with those Xbox style handhelds on the ROG Ally and Ally X. That makes it easy to see which of these games are customized to work well.

3:38Jenn Cutter: So games with a handheld optimized badge in the store are ready to go. If they say mostly compatible, that means you might have to change a few in-game settings to make it work, but then it should work well. There's also a Windows Performance Fit indicator of should play great or should play well. I'm guessing great is better than well. But honestly, what most people are talking about is that$600 to$1 ,000 price. Asus's comparable non-Xbox ROG ally systems are priced from$500 to$800. And of course, the Switch 2 is$449. So Jen, tell me why this Xbox handheld is worth the money.

4:20Dr Niki: I was surprised at the outcry about the price because I bought a Switch 2 as a kind of impulse thing. And that ended up costing me slightly north of a thousand dollars because i bought the pro controller because i find it really heavy to uh to hold the standard handheld uh and uh the two games and stuff which i consider a necessary part of buying a system is you also need the games so to me for this for uh my brain kind of goes to it as a steam deck equivalent like the same way where they have like oh is a steam deck verified or not um it's like is a thousand dollars too much for your new best friend

5:00Jenn Cutter: because this thing would live with me. You can't put a price on friendship. Exactly.

5:05Dr Niki: And then for people who are already paying for Game Pass, you don't have to worry about that. You're set. You're good to go. You have everything you need in a computer that is portable and is going to get updates for a long while in the future. So you are protected on that.

5:21Jenn Cutter: Yeah, I think you make a really good point that comparing this to the Switch 2 is a little bit Apple's and those Asian pairs. Like, you know, maybe they taste slightly similar, but they're not exactly the same. But they are more expensive. Yes, exactly. And one of them is much more expensive. But you're getting, I hadn't even thought about the fact that, yeah, you're getting the better controller included here. And if you're a Game Pass player, you're getting your games. In fact, most people who are going to buy this probably have some games that they own that they can bring over to this, even if they're not Game Pass subscribers.

5:56Jenn Cutter: So that figures into the price. that makes steam a better comparison and the steam deck is still a little cheaper though

6:04Dr Niki: yes it is a little cheaper uh there are a couple more options for the steam deck it's it's more moddable and stuff uh at this point when more people have their hands on the system we'll see what uh what hackers and all that stuff do with it because you do have the windows core whereas on steam deck you have the uh the linux-based one so uh this thing can go in very different directions in the future. And I do know people who use the Steam Deck for work. They do work on it.

6:31Jenn Cutter: Well, you can put Windows on it, right?

6:33Dr Niki: Exactly.

6:33Jenn Cutter: And also run things in Linux, of course.

6:37Dr Niki: So you've got all these options. So that's why, to me, I did not find this price a shocker.

6:43Jenn Cutter: I am not shocked, but I'm surprised. If you would have asked me this morning when I saw this headline for the first time, I would have been like, oh, Jen's probably going to think this is a little pricey. Because you are not someone who willy-nilly spends money. You're very responsible.

6:57Dr Niki: Yeah, except for the impulse switch to purchase. But yes, generally, I try to be responsible.

7:02Jenn Cutter: I say you consider things. I do.

7:05Dr Niki: I'm pretty slow to do things. I've needed new monitors for ages, but I'm waiting for the right deal because I want to buy a future-proof thing. Yeah, there's cheap monitors that are 1920 by 1080, but why would I pay for those right now? That does not have a future, whereas I think this device has a future.

7:21Jenn Cutter: I think that's a very good point. And we're not trying to minimize the fact that it's expensive. It's a lot.

7:27Dr Niki: Gaming is expensive these days. It is why retro is, I think, bigger than it would be otherwise, because those games are accessible. They're easy to find. You can buy used things. I don't think I'm the only one who has a CRT hanging around if you really wanted to go old school. Yeah.

7:45Jenn Cutter: Yeah. But I'll be honest, writing this up today, made me kind of want to get one.

7:51Dr Niki: I know. It's like, if I didn't buy a Switch 2, I would be rather seriously looking at this, because I'm going to be traveling a bit more for hockey this year. And that is why I got super into Game Boys and PSPs. I skipped the Vita, apologizing to Vita fan. But I played the living heck out of those systems. And like, even as an adult, I would spend a lot of time with this. The same way I spend a ton of time with the Switch and will in the future spend a ton of time with the Switch too.

8:20Jenn Cutter: I play fewer games because I want to play them when I'm sitting on the couch and we have something else on the TV.

8:25Dr Niki: Yes. Which for me is like baseball and I don't enjoy hockey intermissions. So I get a lot of gaming done during hockey intermissions. I don't need their hot takes. I've got my own hot takes.

8:36Jenn Cutter: Yeah, exactly. That's fantastic. So hockey and baseball fans, Here's your handheld. Congratulations.

8:42Dr Niki: DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Johnny Hernandez, High Tech Oki, Chris Zaragoza, and Allison Sheridan.

8:52Jenn Cutter: Yay, Allison!

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11:56Jenn Cutter: All right, there's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

11:58Dr Niki: So, hey, remember that app Neon we talked about on Thursday? The one that paid you to record your phone calls and share them with Neon? Well, later Thursday, TechCrunch discovered by analyzing network traffic using a tool called Burb Suite that it could get an unprotected link to the audio files it had sent to Neon. TechCrunch says it could also get the servers to give it access to other users' recorded audio, as well as metadata, including phone numbers and more. After TechCrunch alerted Neon that this was possible, the company's founder sent an email to customers alerting them of a temporary takedown to add extra layers of security.

12:38Jenn Cutter: I don't know the details here. TechCrunch was very responsible in how they disclosed it, so it's hard to tell. but I'm guessing it might be as simple as URL hacking. Yeah. That they were able to sniff the network traffic to get the URLs of their own stuff and then go, well, what if we just change this directory? What if we iterate on this number a few times? And that Neon is caught with like, we didn't think anyone would look or we didn't think about that at all. Yeah, or it's like, we thought that was covered

13:09Dr Niki: and clearly it did not get covered. Yeah. Somebody checked it off and wasn't correct.

13:14Jenn Cutter: This is a small startup without a whole lot of people that got real popular real fast. And that is the kind of thing that gets exposed when your small startup gets really popular really fast. It could be negligence. It could just be that it was overlooked and they have a small staff. I'm not trying to forgive them for it. Trust me. But I also don't know that it was malicious. Like we, you know, move fast to break things and screw the user kind of attitude either. It's probably just something that got overlooked.

13:47Dr Niki: Yeah. Yep.

13:48Jenn Cutter: But it needs to be looked at. Yes.

13:51Dr Niki: The same thing with the security cameras where it's like, oh, but you can also look at anyone else's door. It's like, yeah, no, you guys need to get on that.

13:57Jenn Cutter: When you're dealing with something as privacy sensitive as let's record your phone calls and sell them to companies. I need to not be able to get your phone calls by doing a URL hack or sniffing traffic. All right. Another big follow up here. Thursday, the president of the United States signed an executive order that declares that a forthcoming framework of a deal. So that's a lot of ifs for ByteDance to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok will meet the criteria of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. That's the one that requires ByteDance to have already divested itself of TikTok.

14:37Jenn Cutter: The executive order says a new ownership group will take over. ByteDance will retain less than 20%. Software updates will be monitored by the US entity, which implies that ByteDance continues to do the software updates, by the way. And the algorithm will be under the control of the new venture and retrained on US user data, as we reported before. That's actually in the order that they'll retrain it. The order applies to all ByteDance apps. They name CapCut and Lemonade specifically, but says the other ones as well. The order directs the attorney general not to take any enforcement action for 120 days, which would be January 23rd, 2026, in order to give the deal time to complete.

15:17Jenn Cutter: There were no other details about the actual sale in the executive order, but we have lots of reporting and even some comments outside of the EO. Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, says the deal values the U.S. TikTok business at$14 billion, quite a bit lower than others expected, which was in the$30 to$35 billion range. So it's a bargain. ByteDance as a whole is valued at$330 billion. Bloomberg reports that ByteDance will receive a fee based on all revenue generated from using its algorithm. That could end up giving ByteDance 50 % of overall profit, which could explain why the valuation is so small.

15:54Jenn Cutter: CNBC sources say that Oracle, as expected, Silver Lake, as expected, and the Abu Dhabi-based MGX Investment Fund, which is a new one to me, a new one in this conversation to me, will be the main investors and hold about 45%, so less than 50%. Nobody will have a 50 % control of this. ByteDance's non-Chinese investors like Susquehanna and some others will get 35%. And that's where maybe your Michael Dells or your Rupert Murdoch's might show up in that 35%. And ByteDance itself will get 19.9%, so just less than 20%. Oracle will continue to host and oversee security of US TikTok data as it does now.

16:38Jenn Cutter: That's not a big surprise. And last post reporting that ByteDance will create a new US company responsible for e-commerce brand advertising and managing ties with TikTok's international operations. That says this thing is going to work like TikTok does everywhere else in the world. It's just going to have a backend that's operated by this TikTok US company. The big one here, though, is that China hasn't said anything except like we're very interested in complying with Chinese laws on a deal. The president of the United States says that Xi Jinping, the president of China, has signed off on this.

17:15Jenn Cutter: But China hasn't said that yet.

17:17Dr Niki: Yeah, well, that's that's the big thing we're all waiting for. But with what last post said, that to me is like, oh, that's the bridge for creators. if they get to keep their existing things, if they don't have to change anything, if they're already in the programs they need to be in to make money. Partner managers might stay the same, all of that. This would definitely make the transition easier for them and keep them on the platform.

17:41Jenn Cutter: That's a great point. Yeah. It feels like they're going to try to make this as seamless as possible if you're not paying attention, which everyone is paying attention. But even then, they want it to go smoothly. Yeah.

17:53Dr Niki: I'm also curious about the retraining because like on that one day where Americans were not on the app, Canadians suddenly saw a flood of Europeans and Australians, just tons of Australians on the app. So I'm thinking like, OK, is it going to like really push Americans to see other Americans? Or is it like what is the specific retraining, which, again, we can only see.

18:15Jenn Cutter: It will still get international content. The preferences of the algorithm will be based on U.S. preferences. So it's going to change something. And it'll be really interesting to see what changes.

18:25Dr Niki: And we will, of course, be on top of that as more develops. At Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit, Saudi Arabian company Humane showed off its Horizon Pro PC running on a Snapdragon X Elite chip. It runs on a custom operating system called Humane 1, which focuses all interactions on a generative agent rather than apps. The interface gives you options like chat, generate image, knowledge retrieval, and doc summarizer. Humane plans to sell the machine on a subscription basis with models for students, consumers, and enterprise. And when I was looking at this thing, it kind of felt like I was using a shop kiosk where it's like, well, here are your six options.

19:07Dr Niki: What do you want?

19:08Jenn Cutter: Yeah, yeah. No, that's interesting. I don't know if this will catch on, but it is an experiment I'm glad someone is doing. I will forgive them spelling humane M-A-I-N for having an interesting idea where it's like, what if the agent is your entry? And I like it that someone's experimenting with a new interface, whether this works or not. Let's try different ways of interacting than the good old-fashioned apps and folders. Maybe apps and folders are the best we got right now, but we don't know unless we try different things.

19:39Dr Niki: Yeah, no, the problem is like I'm old school. I know what a save button actually represents. but these kids these days, you know, they might really be into this.

19:49Jenn Cutter: Thanks to RW for tipping us off to this one in the DTNS subreddit. The UK government announced its intention to create a digital ID that would be mandatory if you want to work in the UK. It would be meant to be stored on a phone, although the government intends to make sure it can work for those who cannot use a smartphone. There will be no requirement to carry it with you. It is expected to only include name, birthdate, nationality, residency status, and your photo. The UK government will launch a consultation about the digital ID later this year and expects it will be mandatory at the latest by the end of 2029.

20:22Jenn Cutter: The EU is planning to introduce a similar digital identity wallet next year.

20:26Dr Niki: Well, the EU has been planning it and pushing it back for a while. Yeah.

20:31Jenn Cutter: And I think there's a lot said today that is the devil in the details kind of thing that's going to make this a little harder to implement than perhaps Prime Minister Stormer implied.

20:45Dr Niki: meta plans to offer a paid version of facebook and instagram in the uk which will not contain ads uh it will cost uh 2.99 pounds a month on the web or 3.99 for ios or android apps meta also released a new feed of generated videos in the meta ai app called vibes it's like reels

21:06Jenn Cutter: but generated hey when you don't have european laws that require you not to track people it's easier to put this in place, isn't it?

21:15Dr Niki: Yeah. Like part of me thinks like, is this just kind of the equivalent to YouTube premium, which tons of people pay for it to just get what they want with no bother around it?

21:25Jenn Cutter: No, exactly. And the trick in the EU is that the consumer groups are saying, no, the law says you can't track us, not that you can offer to make us pay. And the judges have said, yeah, I think you're okay to make people pay, but you got to charge less. And maybe you also have to give them an option that tracks them less for free. Whereas in the UK, they don't have that law to deal with it. So it is exactly like YouTube premium there. You can also now order the Raspberry Pi 500 Plus. The Plus is the new part of the name. It's an improved version of the Raspberry Pi inside a keyboard, just like the 500 has 16 gigabytes of ram though instead of the eight has a 256 gigabyte nvme ssd instead of micro sd storage also has a fancier keyboard with mechanical switches uh if you must know it is a low profile clicky gateron blue ks33 switch uh has replaceable key pack key caps individually programmable rgb leds and it's twice the price of the pi 500 it's 200 bucks i talked to my friends

22:33Dr Niki: who love the Raspberry Pi, and they're stoked. They love the switch to an SSD instead of the micro SD, because let's face it, it's a little tricky to get reliable micro SD these days, unless you're shopping at specific places. But for me, it's a low profile keyboard. I can't do low profile. And if I ever find the person who stole my IBM Model M, they better flee the country. That's the kind of profile I like. So people who tried to put the higher profile buttons on this found that they bottomed out. So just be aware of that if you're picky like me.

23:12Jenn Cutter: Yeah. And if you took Jen's keyboard, you better keep a low profile.

23:15Dr Niki: Keep running. Keep running.

23:17Jenn Cutter: All right. Finally, a few quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. The U.S.

23:24Dr Niki: Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, a.k.a. CISA, issued an emergency directive ordering federal agencies to secure Cisco firewall devices against two zero-day attacks.

23:35Jenn Cutter: Google DeepMind released Gemini Robotics 1.5, which can use Google Search to help carry out complex tasks and learn from the world around them, including from other robots.

23:45Dr Niki: OpenAI released a benchmark called GDPVal, which attempts to compare models to human professionals in various industries and found Anthropic's cloud open 5.1 model ranked highest.

23:57Jenn Cutter: Yeah, they ranked the competition. So maybe it is a useful benchmark. Speaking of Anthropic, their CEO previously said AI might wipe out 25 % of jobs. But Anthropic just announced that it's going to triple its international workforce this year.

24:11Dr Niki: Interesting. In a direct challenge to Google, Perplexity launched a search API that gives developers direct real-time access to its web index.

24:21Jenn Cutter: Microsoft released the final non-security update for Windows 10 version 22H2 into preview. This one's for free last time.

24:31Dr Niki: I'm so sad. It's like the last time I'm going to hit update and not pay for it. And in important gaming news, Bowser will go down on December 31st. That is Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser will retire then. And 20 year veteran Devin Pritchard will take over. And yeah, so you've got till the end of the year to make all of your Bowser jokes. Keep them coming, folks. I love going through my feed and seeing them.

24:58Jenn Cutter: Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper.

25:01Dr Niki: The Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded September 19th. These are always fun, of course. And Dr. Nikki joins us to explain what they are, why you should care, and whether you should eat Teflon.

25:13Jenn Cutter: Dr. Nikki, thank you for coming back.

25:15Tom Merritt: Happy to be here and talk about my favorite Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes.

25:21Jenn Cutter: The most wonderful time of the year. For those who are uninitiated, I know many people already do know, but for those who don't, what are the Ig Nobel Prizes?

25:29Tom Merritt: So these are considered the kind of quirky, fun cousin of the Nobel Prizes. Their tagline is that it's research that makes people laugh and then think.

25:39Jenn Cutter: Yes. So they're sort of making fun of studies, but these are real studies, right? And sometimes, even though they're funny sounding, they have valuable research.

25:51Tom Merritt: Yeah. And actual Nobel Prize winners do present the award.

25:55Jenn Cutter: Ah, fantastic.

25:56Tom Merritt: They're in on the joke. But yeah, it's real research for sure.

25:59Jenn Cutter: Yeah, yeah. These are all real research. They're just interesting and thought-provoking and good for a laugh. What caught your eye of the prize winners this year?

26:09Tom Merritt: So we'll go into some depth about the more tech ones, but some of the less techy prizes went to studies like recording your fingernail growth for 35 years. This was a posthumous prize. Studying why certain kinds of lizards prefer certain kinds of pizza at a beach resort. and if you paint cows to look like zebras, do they get less fly bites?

26:31Jenn Cutter: Well, now I want to know what pizza the lizard's like so I can order the one they don't.

26:35Tom Merritt: Well, you'll have to dive into the ceremony.

26:39Jenn Cutter: Do you know, do you remember if the cows painted to look like zebras were bit less?

26:43Tom Merritt: Yeah. So it's actually building on a previous Ig Nobel Prize where they had investigated that and the stripes do seem to help avoid flies, which may be why zebras are striped amongst other things, which is like predator confusion.

26:56Jenn Cutter: Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. Let's talk about some of the more techie ones. What do we got?

27:00Tom Merritt: So the chemistry prize was awarded for experiments to test whether eating Teflon, which is also known as polyterifluoroethylene.

27:10Jenn Cutter: That's what I always call it, just to be accurate.

27:13Tom Merritt: A form of plastic. Whether this is a good way to increase your food volume and therefore your satiety without increasing calorie content, basically making like diet food. Wow.

27:26Jenn Cutter: Okay. So when I think of Teflon, I either think of Ronald Reagan, the Teflon president, or I think of Teflon coated pans and how everyone says you shouldn't use them because the Teflon will come off into your food. But this was studying whether that's a good thing?

27:41Tom Merritt: So yes, it is the same Teflon as in Teflon coated pans. I believe that the coming off part is not actually the Teflon, but the sticky part underneath it, which is carcinogenic. So apparently, So the authors wanted to test if Teflon was bad for you. And they fed rats a diet that was 25 % Teflon for 90 days. And the rats showed no sign of getting any toxicity from the Teflon. And they lost weight.

28:07Jenn Cutter: Well, because it's filling you up without giving you calories? It's just a filler. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Huh.

28:12Tom Merritt: So the point is that Teflon is what they're able to, what they're very sure of in this publication. They're trying to like defend Teflon, which I find kind of funny. But it's inert, it's body-safe, it's resistant to stomach acid, it doesn't have taste, you can powder it, and it's cheap. So they're basically trying to convince the readers that we have – like the first line of the paper is we have zero-calorie drinks. What about zero-calorie food? If you increase the volume of your food in your stomach and stretch your stomach but the extra volume is inert plastic, then yay.

28:48Jenn Cutter: Good luck in this current world. convincing a bunch of people to eat plastic.

28:54Tom Merritt: Well, diet culture is a thing.

28:57Jenn Cutter: Never underestimate the power of a well-marketed diet. That's a very good point. I mean, I would like to see it replicated.

29:09Tom Merritt: Yeah, and humans also, and not just mice.

29:11Jenn Cutter: And then maybe a small clinical trial on some humans before I start down in a bunch of Teflon. But I could see where this might end up being counterintuitively a good thing. Now, I don't know how a steak is going to taste if it's mostly Teflon.

29:25Tom Merritt: It's tasteless. It's just powdered Teflon on top. But that's the thing, right?

29:28Jenn Cutter: It won't taste like a steak. It'll taste like nothing.

29:32Tom Merritt: Well, basically the point is if you have 10 % steak and 90 % Teflon as your total meal, then it tastes like steak and you're really, really full.

29:41Jenn Cutter: Really? It still tastes like steak? I feel like if it's 90 % Teflon, it would be 90 % less tasty.

29:47Tom Merritt: It's not like a Teflon steak smoothie. well actually i don't know i guess um we'd have to think of a maybe like chicken noodle soup and yeah okay it's lightly flavored chicken noodle soup and the noodles could be mostly

30:01Jenn Cutter: teflon and you would might not notice okay no no am i convincing you to follow the teflon diet i don't know if you convinced me yet i still would like a few more clinical trials but uh but yeah i could see where that one might work all right what about the prize for engineering uh yes the

30:18Tom Merritt: The Engineering Design Prize was awarded for analyzing from an engineering design perspective how stinky shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe rack.

30:30Jenn Cutter: So is the theory that maybe if the shoes are stinky, you're less likely to use the shoe rack?

30:35Tom Merritt: It's basically how to fix the stinky shoe problem.

30:38Jenn Cutter: Oh, OK. OK, good. Even more practical. So first of all, they wanted to interview people and find out if there was a stinky shoe problem.

30:46Tom Merritt: So a little bit of psychology study. They interviewed about 150 Indian university students and 90 % of them use shoe racks and 50 or over 50 % of them reported being embarrassed about either their shoes smells or other people's shoes smells. So there is a stinky shoe problem.

31:03Jenn Cutter: Less than I thought, honestly.

31:06Tom Merritt: Well, they're students. They're first year students.

31:08Jenn Cutter: All right. All right. That tracks.

31:09Tom Merritt: So in response to this, the researchers like checked on different types of, you know, managing shoe odor deafening techniques. So like leaving your shoes out in the sun or washing them or using sprays. But they found that they weren't really as effective as they wanted them to be. So they invented their own type of shoe rack and they use UV rays to kill odor emitting bacteria, which are the main culprit of stinkiness. and their experiment for that was to use shoes from university athletes who had really, really stinky shoes and it worked really well. So the paper says a very strong odor at first was emanating from the shoes, but after three minutes with their UV ray shoe rack, it neutralized the odor.

31:53Jenn Cutter: So no kidding. Okay. Well, if it works for university student athletes, it's probably going to work for me. So I'm looking forward to this. We, we have a shoe control. We actually need a better shoe rack than what we have we we have a place for the shoes to go but yeah maybe

32:07Tom Merritt: this is the the next shoe rack for yeah and this was specifically like the closed in shoe racks where like uh bacteria is known to them just proliferate and smell what about the physics prize well this one i thought was really excellent so do you like to cook tom i do i actually i i don't do it as much as i should but i do like it have you ever made cassio pepe sauce yes uh but

32:30Jenn Cutter: tell you what, the Trader Joe's frozen one always turns out better than mine.

32:34Tom Merritt: Is it possible the one you make by hand is maybe clumpy or stringy?

32:38Jenn Cutter: Yeah, it just never gets as smooth as the one I got in Florence.

32:42Tom Merritt: Well, then you've run into the same problem as the physicist who won this Ig Nobel Prize. So guess what country they were from?

32:51Jenn Cutter: Italy.

32:52Tom Merritt: These Italian physicists studied the physics of pasta sauce and specifically the phase transition that can lead to clumping in Casio e Pepe sauce. Their paper is called The Phase Behavior of Casio e Pepe Sauce. It's one of the best papers I've read recently. I highly recommend it. They conducted really intense physics experiments to figure out a perfect recipe that feeds enough Casio e Pepe for, quote, two hungry people, as the paper states. And it also prevents clumps and stringingness, which they called the mozzarella phase of the sauce. But they didn't just like do recipe testing like in America's Test Kitchen.

33:39Tom Merritt: Like it was very rigorous testing if you read this paper. So they checked many factors. They applied predictive models to determine things like protein aggregation, depending on clump size, whether the pepper caused like seeded nodules. Oh, wow. To enhance protein aggregation. They used quantile thresholding and phase diagrams to determine this. And they also investigated alternate stabilizers. So this was pretty deep, actually.

34:10Jenn Cutter: Yeah, no kidding. So what ended up being the trick?

34:13Tom Merritt: So the secret was that cornstarch, they used cornstarch instead of like the pasta cooking water for the sauce. Because that way you can control the ratio of starch. And the ideal ratio is a 2 % to 3 % starch ratio to cheese weight.

34:29Jenn Cutter: Does that change the taste though? No.

34:32Tom Merritt: You can use corn or potato starch. Usually what you would use is the starch that's extracted from the pasta while it cooks. It helps keep this uniform creaminess. And because they're Italian physicists, I trust that they did take the taste into account. They also were very stringent about using DOP parmigiano. So like Italian Parmesan is very important to them. So I just thought this one was really excellent.

34:59Jenn Cutter: That is great. I'm definitely reading this one and trying it out. And I will report back with a taste test. Dr. Nicky, thank you so much for reporting on one of the greatest events every year, the Ig Nobel Prizes. If folks want to find more of what you do, where should they go?

35:13Tom Merritt: Well, first of all, they can watch this on YouTube. It's recorded, so you can go find it. And I'll be posting that link and some details from this article on my website, NicoleAckermans.com and I have the same handle on Blue Sky.

35:24Jenn Cutter: Thanks, Dr. Nikki.

35:26Tom Merritt: I love Dr.

35:27Dr Niki: Nikki so much.

35:29Jenn Cutter: She's the best.

35:30Dr Niki: And I have two main takeaways because like, okay, so if I go for a hike, should I be painting myself as a zebra? And also the shoe people needed to talk to hockey people. They've been selling UV hockey gear storage lockers for years now.

35:45Jenn Cutter: So here we go.

35:47Dr Niki: But now we have a study. So there you go.

35:48Jenn Cutter: Yeah. Now you've got the science to back it up. with your anecdotal information. I figured you'd have a take on the shoe rack. Yep. That's interesting. Well, folks, we don't have a shoe rack to sell you, but we do have all kinds of cool gift ideas over at our store. You can get a mug, you can get a t-shirt, you can get a mouse pad, stuff with the DTNS logo on it. They're great gifts, great way to support the show. If you're like, I can't really justify sporting in any other way, but maybe if I had a mug out of it, I could. DailyTechNewsShow.com slash store.

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37:13Dr Niki: We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today, Mike has a very pertinent question related to Penske Media's suit against Google.

37:23Jenn Cutter: Yeah, we were talking about this with Andy yesterday. Mike wrote, long-time fan and patron here. I've been hearing the discussion about Google's AI summarizing articles so people don't have to visit the original source. I'm curious, how is that different from what shows like DTNS do? You read the stories, you share the main points too, though of course you also add your own opinions and perspective, which we really appreciate. Just wondering what you see as the distinction. Thank you, Mike. This is a great question. Copyright law-wise, we would have the defense that we are being much more transformative, right?

37:58Jenn Cutter: Because we are now doing audio. We are injecting our own opinions and interpretations and phrasing. We're still linking back to the original sources and all of that. So we're on pretty well-worn ground. This is not well-worn ground, what Penske is alleging, which Penske is saying this is not transformative enough. It's still text. It's still text on the Internet, just like our text. It's mostly the same text. And they are not making enough of a transformative use of it. Now, it's up to the judge to decide if they are or not. But that's sort of the legal distinction there. Jen, ethically, do you think there's a difference?

38:36Dr Niki: I think that all of you wonderful people out there seek us out specifically for the second part of the equation here for the analysis. So because that is what you are looking for, and that is what you're getting, because that is what we aim to provide. Yeah, I don't see it quite the same as the AI, how the AI removes searching for the source entirely. because I don't even think a lot of people look at the source of the summary that they're getting, whereas we aim to be very careful to credit when people are doing the original work and not just reading press releases.

39:11Jenn Cutter: And I'll give Google credit. They've gotten much better at including those sources themselves, and they tend to be right most of the time. Instead of clicking on something, you're like, that has nothing to do with what you're saying it does. So there's a good argument from Mike here about that. And maybe it is transformative enough, but I don't think they are good at synthesizing as much as humans yet. And to your point, Jen, definitely not good with opinion. In fact, they are instructed not to inject opinion as much as possible. So there are quite a few differences, but a thought-provoking question.

39:46Jenn Cutter: And I'm glad you asked it, Mike. That's a good one. Yes.

39:48Dr Niki: And you guys are here because you want the context of things, which is why We help each other understand. So what are you thinking about? Do you have some insight into a story? Please share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

40:03Jenn Cutter: Big thanks to Dr. Nikki and Mike for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business, folks. If we don't have patrons, we don't have a show. So big thanks to everyone who already is a patron. And if you would like to give a little value back for the value you get, Head to patreon.com slash DTNS.

40:48Jenn Cutter: Scottis1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Luters. Art by Len Peralta. Acast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Bobby Wagner. Our guest this week was Andy Beach. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.

41:14Dr Niki: This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com

41:23Jenn Cutter: Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

41:29Dr Niki: Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget. You can really have it delivered. Or pick it up. Mommy, look! I think your kid is walking up the slide. Really? AutoTrader, buy your car online.

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