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Daily Tech News Show

21 Jan 2026 · 33m · 16 chapters

Episode artwork

YouTube Wants You to Have the Best of AI and Kill the Slop - DTNS 5189

In short

Main points

  • Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Dr. Niki
  • Key Topics: YouTube's creator letter, AI developments, a new robot hand, and a discussion on mobile app spending.
  • Celebration of Creators:
  • YouTube CEO Neil Moen's annual letter emphasizes the rise of creators as legitimate stars, akin to past studio stars.
  • Creators are now investing in studios comparable to traditional media.
  • Content Formats:
  • YouTube plans to accommodate all screen sizes and video formats, highlighting versatility in content delivery.
  • Announcement of customizable features for YouTube TV, including multi-view options.
  • Partnerships and Initiatives:
  • Collaboration with the BBC for original content specifically for YouTube channels.
  • Investments in UK creators and skills training programs.
  • Parental Controls:
  • New tools to empower parents in digital environments, positioning YouTube as a safe platform for children.
  • AI Content Creation:
  • Introduction of AI tools to allow creators to produce content featuring their likeness.
  • Enhancements for managing AI-generated content and combating low-quality, spam-like content (referred to as "slop").

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

0:46

YouTube's Annual Letter Insights

Discussion on YouTube CEO Neil Moen's annual letter outlining key changes and innovations.

“Not mentioned in the letter, but indicative of YouTube's kind of position as saying like we're the new TV.”
3:41

AI and its Impact on Content Creation

Exploration of AI's role in content creation, including auto-dubbing and creator tools.

“And we're all kind of dealing with each group of those people.”
6:01

The Debate on AI-Generated Content

A conversation about perceptions of AI-generated content and its implications on viewers.

“Or entertainment, it'd be like, ah, just let me focus on one thing.”
7:51

Support from Listeners

Acknowledgment of the show's supporters and the role they play in its existence.

“Well, we have a lot of sway because of the people who support our show.”
8:11

Tech Briefs: Innovations and Rumors

Updates on recent tech innovations, including a detachable robot hand and smartphone rumors.

“Now, before you say this sounds like a horror movie, it's actually kind of cool.”
14:00

Market Uncertainty in Phone Releases

Discussing the unpredictable landscape of smartphone releases and expectations for new models.

“OnePlus's case, maybe the company could be like, no, no, no, we're still going to do this.”
15:10

Netflix's Subscriber Growth and Strategy

An insight into Netflix's recent earnings report and their plans for vertical video content.

“Netflix earnings beat expectations and the company announced it has passed a milestone of 325 million subscribers worldwide.”
16:40

OpenAI's Advertising Strategy

Exploration of OpenAI's potential advertising strategy and its implications for users.

“Some people might like that very much, but you're competing with yourself.”
18:10

Google's Approach to Ads in AI

Comparing Google and OpenAI's approaches to integrating ads into their products.

“But I think ad generated stuff for users, of which I am one, I don't pay for chat GPT, even go,$8 a month I'm saving, even though there are a lot of limitations there.”
19:20

OpenAI's Age Prediction Features

Overview of OpenAI's new age prediction feature and its implementation.

“We also do live streams and we hope you're all healthy if you're watching.”
Show all 16 chapters
20:40

Quick Tech Headlines

A roundup of recent tech news including Adobe features and mobile app spending trends.

“Sensor Tower's annual state of mobile report indicates people spent 21 % more money on mobile apps worldwide in 2025 than they did in 2024.”
22:30

Insect-Inspired Microphone Technology

Delving into how the anatomy of a fly has influenced modern microphone design.

“MEMS is micro electromechanical systems, and they are good for getting wide range dynamic audio monitoring, or in some cases, other sensors into small places.”
28:01

Exploring MEMS Technology Inspired by Flies

Learn how MEMS technology has evolved from natural inspirations and its applications.

“And then it replicated it in this small synthetic device.”
29:19

Dr. Nikki's Insights and Where to Find More

Discover Dr. Nikki's work and her fascinating insights into animal biology.

“Nicky, thank you so, so much for explaining this to us.”
29:35

Discussion on AI Infrastructure and Public Costs

Explore the conversation surrounding the costs of AI infrastructure and its implications.

“I really want to know more about the butts.”
31:30

Call for Listener Insights and Support

Engage with the show by sharing insights and consider supporting the podcast.

“Maybe we should put a little heat on OpenAI and Microsoft and Google and Amazon.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:02This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, January 21st, 2026. We tell you what you need to know. We give you important context. And gosh darn it, we're helping each other understand, aren't we? Yeah, we are. And today, insects are responsible for you being able to hear someone on a phone call. Dr. Nikki is going to tell us why. And YouTube takes a stand, both for and against AI for creators. Yeah, take both sides. YouTube, good for you. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. youtube ceo neil moen does an annual letter uh every year that's being annual uh to the youtube community and among his bullet points this year are that creators are the new stars in studios sarah we're the new stars in studios i don't know who was surprised by this is 2026 really the year where creators are celebrated on youtube he must still be running into some like prejudices of people going like oh so it's just an influencer it's not real tv yeah so he made a lot of deal like you know youtube creators are buying studios that are as big as some tv studios have been in the past uh the days of dismissing user generated content are over uh he also talked about youtube being for all sizes of screens from phones to tvs all formats of video from short to long form gave youtube tv a shout out mentioning uh that a fully customizable multi-view uh is coming so it It won't be limited to just certain kinds of content as it is now, with more than 10 niche plans for sports, entertainment and news as well.

1:35Not mentioned in the letter, but indicative of YouTube's kind of position as saying like we're the new TV. The BBC confirmed it will make original content specifically for its YouTube channels instead of just taking content it makes for other platforms and putting them on YouTube. And it's going to launch some new YouTube channels aimed at children and young adults. YouTube is also going to partner with the BBC to invest in UK creators and do some skills training, upskilling as they call it. Neil, back to his letter, said parental controls that are empowering parents to protect their kids in the digital world, not from the digital world, are on the way.

2:12And they are working on expanding ways for creators to earn, talking a lot about shopping, a lot about brand deals, and a little bit about fan funding. And then, of course, he finished with AI. Here's a quote. This year, you'll be able to create a short using your own likeness. That's something that you can do on OpenAI Sora. So, okay. Produce games with a simple text prompt and experiment with music, which was kind of vague. Using AI to make auto-dubbed content is already successful. He pointed out there are 6 million daily viewers of auto-dubbed content where you can have it in a different language with auto-dubbed.

2:48The stuff I've run across, I don't know if you've seen much of this, Sarah, has not been that great. It doesn't match the mouth, but it doesn't match the tones of the people you're seeing. But yeah, I mean, if you know that's what is happening and then it's not going to be perfect, not a deal breaker. But yeah, we have a ways to go. He wants to equip creators with new tools to manage the use of their likeness in AI generated content. So in other words, let you create a short with your likeness, but stop other people from being able to do it and reduce the spread of low quality AI content, a.k.a.

3:20slop. uh he said and i'll quote now we're actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combating spam and clip bait i would have liked a few more details there honestly other than saying like hey we're good at these two things uh i bet we'll be good at this one um but i don't know maybe they will be what what did you take away from neil's letter yeah the ai slop uh conversation i feel like uh and this is not unique to youtube at all it's pretty much all social networks you have like three classes of people first for well not classes uh groups first group is people who are like wow a toddler saved a baby wolf from quicksand you know like isn't that amazing humanity and then the second group of people are like that's not real it's ai like how do you not know this oh you know we're doomed and then the third group of people are like, it's clearly AI and just that being out there isn't ruining anyone's life.

4:17Why are you so mad? And we're all kind of dealing with each group of those people. I find in my own bubble, my own algorithmic bubble on YouTube, that I only run across slop and get frustrated by it when I'm dealing with music. And that's probably because I use YouTube for music quite a bit. In fact, he talked about leaning into that some more too, but he didn't give a whole lot of details. I like the idea of being able to say, you know what? I want to know when a hour-long playlist of music, which we do all the time, we'll just put music up, is generated. I might still play it. I might be fine with that if I just want to elevator music.

4:59But yeah, if I'm like, ooh, jazz, I want to discover new jazz artists, and then I play it, and I'm like, oh, wait, this is just generated jazz. It's not actually real. Even if it's got vocalists sometimes you can tell it's like yeah i just i just want to know that so and they talked about better labeling of stuff like that maybe some filters would be good too one of the other things i i wonder about going back to youtube tv because i i i do have youtube tv i pay for it um and i'm more or less happy with it although the price keeps going up is that multi-view during sports that makes a lot of sense yeah uh in a very big news story you know let's say there's I don't know, a fire in my city or, you know, something else where you're kind of glued to the TV and you want to see stuff from a variety of different sources.

5:44The Dodgers World Series parade would have been a time when I would have liked to use it because I wasn't sure who actually was showing the right stuff at any given time. Yeah, different angles, you know, etc. But I don't know how much that is going to work on a day-to-day basis for a lot of stuff. Like, I don't want to watch five channels at once unless I'm at a sports bar. Yeah, certainly not of dramas, right? Or entertainment, it'd be like, ah, just let me focus on one thing. But yeah, the BBC news is interesting to me, especially because this is exclusive to YouTube. I mean, it might show up on the BBC in some other forum at some other time, but that was the announcement was this is going to be YouTube specific.

6:25And if you like BBC content, then it's a new place to watch stuff. The BBC did say it would show up on iPlayer. So if you're in the UK and you're like, wait, I pay a license fee for this, you'll still have access. Right. Yeah. But empowering parents to protect their kids in the digital world, not from the digital world, that sounds great in concept. It's a nice turn of phrase. It is. Very catchy. It is. But also, your kids are going to be in the digital world. I don't think you're going to be able to stop them in most cases. So that's the right approach. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All the things that Moen said sound great.

7:04So, you know, we'll see in practice. As always, as always, right? I mean, trust me, sometimes CEOs do say stuff where you're like, that was weird. Why are you saying that? Why aren't you saying this? So I'll give partial credit for like, yes, at least he's saying mostly the right stuff and gave some details on things like actual features that they're actually rolling out. But a lot of it is promises that, But I'm not going to be the kind of person that's like, oh, he's in charge. Therefore, he won't keep his promise. But like you say, it will be more satisfying once that feature has actually rolled out and we know the details.

7:40And remember, Tom, content creators aren't just little bugs in the atmosphere anymore. They have real sway on YouTube. Thank you, Neil. For the first time. Yeah. Well, we have a lot of sway because of the people who support our show. DTNS is made possible by you listening or watching right now. Thanks to Matt Zaglin, Jeff Wilkes, and Tim Deputy. All right, there's lots more to get to. Let's do it with the briefs. Scientists led by Zhao Gao, who did the work as a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, published an article in Nature Communications describing a detachable robot hand that can crawl and grasp items in multiple directions.

8:29Now, before you say this sounds like a horror movie, it's actually kind of cool. It can carry multiple objects at once because each finger is opposable to another finger. Unlike us humans who only have one opposable digit, that would be our thumb. It can also bend its fingers backwards to grip as well. And it can do things with one hand that would almost always take two for humans. Unscrewing a bottle cap unless you get creative, holding a screwdriver and the thing that's putting the screw into. The hand could also be equipped on robots for industrial monitoring and repair. And I think that's where they're going with this, letting it do more than an attached hand of us humans could do.

9:09Ah, our useless little fleshy appendages. The robots are already much better. This is actually happening. This is a real working prototype. It's not very fast. so don't worry you can outrun it at least at least for now uh but yeah you know i don't know detachable hand chasing you around very spider-like but the the idea that you know because you think like oh opposable thumb i mean that's why we can grip things the way that we can but what if all of our fingers did that yeah and what if our fingers could go forwards and backwards we don't think about that because it just is impossible Xiao Gao thought of it Xiao Gao's team thought of it thank goodness this actually isn't even the first demonstration of these kinds of capabilities in a robot hand if you are the person in our audience who's a robot hand enthusiast rolling your eyes right now but it is one of the more capable versions of it and it is an advance in the combination of the practicality of being able to build these things so I think it is worthy of pointing out and plenty of people didn't know that this stuff was being developed myself included uh i also found out when i read the financial times article that thing the uh hand from the adams family which of course everyone's going to compare this to it has an actual full name of thing t thing thing t thing yeah that's like like like t as a middle name as a middle initial i don't know we don't know just thing t thing maybe it's the thing the thing but again this is more capable than thing because things just a regular human hand this has got the ability to do all those extra things that you're talking about yeah and xiao giao did or no i'm sorry it wasn't giao it was a different person that the financial times interviewed uh raised the prospect of using it as a as a prosthetic hand you know so maybe we'll even get the benefit of this hand it's important it's the better hand really lend us a hand yeah we don't always cover rumors on dt desk because they are so often proved wrong, either in part or in whole.

11:12Also, it's often better to just wait for the official announcement and get the whole picture anyway. But when we do pass them along, it's because we think it's reliable and useful to know. We have a few examples to run through today, class. For example, Android Authority is pretty responsible with this stuff, and it feels confident in passing along a post from Universe Ice that says Samsung will hold its unpacked announcement on February 25th for the Galaxy S26, and that it will ship on March 11th. Mobile World Congress is on March 2nd. I figured this announcement would become sometime close to but before Mobile World Congress.

11:45So this tracks. It doesn't seem unreasonable. And I trust Android authority to vet this as like maybe they're seeing some signals themselves. That one's one I'd pass along. Mac Rumors, also not too bad at vetting this stuff, says a Weibo poster known as Fixed Focus Digital, which has a decent track record, says a new iPhone Air will come this autumn. Now, this is one, if we weren't doing this little co-comparison, I probably wouldn't have passed along because it contrasts with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, an extremely reliable reporter who has said we're not getting a new iPhone Air, as far as he can tell, until spring 2027.

12:20So these are two examples of like, here's one probably would have said, here's one maybe we wouldn't, here's why. Then there's the demise of OnePlus. Android Headlines reported that employees within OnePlus told it that Oppo was shutting down the popular brand. Android Headlines cited shipping declines, reductions in staff, and termination of partnerships as evidence of this. However, Extreme Tech and XDA are among several outlets who have noted denials from Oppo. OnePlus India CEO Robin Liu posted on X Tuesday that OnePlus was, quote, operating as usual and will continue to do so. in another place.

12:58He even called these reports false. So that flat out denial. And then OnePlus North America sent out a release to a bunch of outlets, including XDA, saying OnePlus North America continues to operate with full guarantee of users after sales support, software updates, and rights commitments. That one leaves a little more wiggle room of like, yeah, but you didn't say anything about future releases. But when you combine that with the India announcement, it sounds like Oppo is probably pulling back on OnePlus a little bit, not as far as Asus is pulled back on phones, but it's going to be a hard year for sourcing and making phones.

13:30So it's reasonable to think they're being a little cautious, but it doesn't sound like they're killing the brand. Yeah. I mean, some of this is kind of semantics, right? It's like, well, there are certain markets where, you know, we've had more success than others. And every company could say that. It is interesting to me that the Android market, you know, a couple of, you know, pretty high profile brands, uh, are, you know, are rumored to be pulling back. Maybe, you know, in Asus's case, completely, uh, in maybe in, in, in, um, OnePlus's case, maybe the company could be like, no, no, no, we're still going to do this.

14:07Companies say that all the time and then say, eh, we're not going to, you know, like, um, what's, uh, uh, Sony's robot that, uh, is no longer around anymore even though the ibo no not the ibo uh the oh bali yes samsung that was sam samsung samsung thank you uh but you know the company for like a couple years was like no no we're getting there and then we're definitely gonna do it in december we're definitely gonna do it at ces no we're not gonna do it yeah and you can say we're definitely going to do it until you just until you don't mind it's not illegal yeah if anything these stories are an indication of just how uncertain this market is this year for phones.

14:46I would be shocked if we got a new iPhone Air in 2026. The iPhone Air didn't do well last year. Now, I was into it. There's no reason for them to rush out another one. I believe they will put out another one, unlike Samsung, which killed its thin phone. But I don't think it's coming until next year. I believe Gurman on this. He usually ends up being right. Netflix earnings beat expectations and the company announced it has passed a milestone of 325 million subscribers worldwide. That's up 8 % on the year. The company predicts ad sales will double this year. That would be important for Netflix.

15:25Because of spending on content, Netflix projected smaller profits this quarter than analysts expected. They're making more content. Got to spend money for that. During the earnings call, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the company will continue to experiment and expand its vertical video offering. The current test of clips from TV shows and movies in the mobile app will expand to include other types of content as well, including Netflix's video podcasts. A new mobile user interface is also coming later this year. Maybe. And I consume vertical video on Instagram, YouTube, and a little bit on TikTok.

16:04So it's It's not like I'm against it, but I just I don't think of myself as going to Netflix to view it. I don't either. Video podcasts are perfect for this, but I would imagine it would do better for Netflix to put them on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. But I guess having them doesn't hurt anything. And maybe some people discover it. It feels a little me too, though. I'm not I'm not sure this is going to be the killer feature for Netflix. Yeah, I think the point you made about why not just create a really thriving Netflix brand on TikTok. Which they have. Yeah, instead you're saying do that, but also go to Netflix directly.

16:43Some people might like that very much, but you're competing with yourself. Yeah, I guess the idea is if you can get people to do it on Netflix, it keeps them in the app, which improves engagement, which keeps them as a subscriber. That all makes sense to me. Yeah, you get an ad boost. I just don't know how many people are going to do that, though. Yeah. Ad Age and The Information both report that OpenAI has been showing mock-ups to advertisers on how its ad offering will appear for both the free and the Go users of its products. I thought maybe they'd let the Go folks who are only$8 a month off without ads, but it sounds like they might actually get it.

17:16Other paid plans will not. The mock-ups show ads separated by a line below the chat response. In one case, it's above a chat response, but that's in a project. So I guess when you open the project, that's up at the top. OpenAI says it will not integrate ads into the responses themselves. They're not going to change what the response says. But meanwhile, at Davos, Switzerland, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Esabes told Alex Health that Google has no plans to put ads in Gemini, though he did not rule out the possibility that they would come in the future. I had to chuckle at the Google, you know, throwing a little shade at OpenAI.

17:54like, well, maybe OpenAI needs some money. Otherwise, why would they roll out this ad structure? Google. I mean, your entire world is based on AdRev. So, you know, good times. Good times for you. But yeah, I don't know how much I hate this idea. I want to see it in practice. I haven't yet. But I think ad generated stuff for users, of which I am one, I don't pay for chat GPT, even go,$8 a month I'm saving, even though there are a lot of limitations there. I know that this is the trade-off. If I don't pay, I would expect to see ads. They can be annoying. It definitely depends on how they're deployed and what that experience is like and how targeted they are based on what information I'm sending to the platform.

18:47That goes for everybody. That's not just open AI, but I think that it is a delicate situation. Yeah, and they are definitely going to put ads in Gemini at some point. But it helps them out to, you know, big time open AI, like, oh, I guess they need the money. We're going to hold off on it. And it's like, yeah, you're the biggest ad company on the planet. You can afford to hold off on it. You have a little runway here. Yeah, yeah. You know, other companies don't. By the way, the source I used for this story put Alex Health, which is why I said Alex Health, but it's Alex Heath. So apologies and a correction on that.

19:23Well, we hope Alex Heath is healthy. We do. We do. We wish that sincerely. We also do live streams and we hope you're all healthy if you're watching. Catch them by becoming a subscriber at YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. All right, let's finish out with some quick headlines that are just good to know. Might make you look smarter in the future. Adobe announced new features for Acrobat that can summarize a document as a conversation, generate a presentation based on documents, and edit files with natural language prompts. Notebook LM, but for Adobe. Sweden's Instabridge has acquired the popular Nova launcher, the launcher for Android, and promises to focus on maintenance, bug fixes, prioritizing quality and speed, and has lowered the price of Nova Prime to$3.99.

20:13Though, it did add Google and Facebook ad tracking. No ads have showed up yet, but it sounds like they're going to put ads in it at some point. Open AI launched its promised age prediction features, which are meant to identify minors and put content constraints on their conversations. If you're misidentified as a minor, you can submit a selfie to ID verification partner persona, which now I don't work at OpenAI, but I would say this is a great way for someone to be like, I'm not 17. Here, look at my ID. Yeah. Sensor Tower's annual state of mobile report indicates people spent 21 % more money on mobile apps worldwide in 2025 than they did in 2024.

20:56and, for the first time, spent more on non-game mobile apps than on games. Following on Microsoft's promise, OpenAI says it, too, will work with communities where it builds data centers to make sure electricity costs don't rise for consumers as a result of increased energy use by OpenAI. Now, I told you previously to keep an eye on Chinese AI company Zhipu after it launched an IPO and a model it claimed was entirely trained on domestically develop chips. Well, the company announced that starting Friday, it's going to have to limit the number of new subscriptions it can take for its GLM 4.7 coding plan because of computing restraints.

21:37Sony announced its first clip-on open earbuds,$230 LinkBuds clip open with a sound leakage reduction to stop other people from hearing what's in your earbuds. That's pricey. And Nikkei Asia reports that acceptance of facial recognition payments or pay by face is rising in South Korea, led by the popularity of Toss Face Pay, which rose from 400 ,000 subscribers in August to a million by the end of the year. So, you know, just as the U.S. gets tapped, we fall behind in pay by face. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper. Do you like having small, easy to use mics and devices like your cell phones?

22:18Probably. Well, you can thank the bugs for that. Tom talked to Dr. Nikki to explain more. Dr. Nikki, thanks for talking to me again. Hello. Happy to bring you a more in-depth dive about weird animal facts. Yes, this is fantastic. We talked previously about the Animal Facts Conference, and one of the facts that you pulled out is why our microphones in our phones and laptops and everything are thanks to insects yeah someone i randomly walked in on this talk now i was like dts is gonna love this yes tell me more okay so uh well first of all uh the directional mems i guess it's pronounced m-e-m-s microphone in your cell phone is inspired by the inner ear anatomy of a tiny parasitic fly called ormia or cheia okay so why are these microphones so important and needed.

23:15Sure. MEMS is micro electromechanical systems, and they are good for getting wide range dynamic audio monitoring, or in some cases, other sensors into small places. If you remember, or if it was before you're born, ask your parents to remember, phones used to have big honking microphones at the end. The entire phone was like a speaker on one end and a big microphone on the other end. And then the original cell phones even had microphones built into the bottom, but they were big and they were chunky. To make microphones pocket-sized, you had to come up with a small version of this that could still hear and still understand and get enough sensing of the audio to be able to turn it into a usable signal.

24:11And MEMS were a huge part of that. They're also used in medical devices for blood pressure monitoring and for cars for detecting when the airbag should go and stuff like that. So they're not just for audio. And hearing aids. Well, that's also audio. Yeah, yeah. And hearing aids as well. Absolutely. So I guess now I have to connect it to the fly. Yeah. So why did we not swallow the fly but instead rip it off to make MEMS? Perfect. So first, to get to the fly, I have to explain human hearing. And I explained this in my intro to neuroscience class, so you get it for free. But in humans, we can tell which direction sound is coming from.

24:48And we do this by doing a kind of subconscious calculation of the time it takes for the sound to hit one ear and then the other ear. So this is the interaural difference. So if something's coming from the right, it's going to hit your right ear faster. faster and then it'll take a little bit to like go around your head go through your head and hit the other ear and that's how we know okay it's coming from the right um in flies they can't do this because first of all they're really teeny tiny so as the math scales even if they did have ears on either side of their head it would be so close together that you wouldn't really be able to do the math uh very broadly put it's not enough of a difference to be measurable exactly Exactly.

25:28And this specific fly, because it's a parasitic fly, it's even smaller. It has hearing organs that are almost touching. They're separated by 520 micrometers. So everyone was trying to figure out in the late 90s, or like people say, the late 19th century. The late 20th century. Yeah, on the 20th, yeah. How does this fly? It's really good at detecting the orientation of sounds and finding its prey, but how does it do it? Because the distance that is in between its tympani, the sound would take like a microsecond to go in between, and that doesn't work. It can detect a cricket chirp at 5 kilohertz within only about 2 degrees of error.

26:10So it's good, but we didn't know how can it do this. Yeah, it's not doing it the way we would do it, right? Definitely not. So how does it do it? Yeah, it has a different ear structure than we have, but we can call these structures ears. They kind of look like, what do you call the thing behind the speaker, the plate? That's like a cone-shaped. That thing. They have two of those next to each other. These are like the tympané of our ears. And they're joined by this little bridge made of cuticle. This is the tissue that the fly's exoskeleton is made out of. And this little bridge is able to mechanically magnify this interaural difference to the point that it's actually really, really good.

26:52So instead of one microsecond, it magnifies it mechanically so that the difference is 50 microseconds and it becomes actually quite good at telling the difference. And this is called intertempano mechanical coupling. Okay, so it's not using the ear, the quote unquote ears. It's creating its own device. It grew its own device. Kind of. And what scientists did is they kind of figured this out. And the same paper that figured this out made a prototype mechanism where it was like these two cones and a little bridge and then figured out, I mean, really more complicated than that. But I don't know a lot about acoustic physics.

27:30So I stayed away from the details. It has to do with the vibration frequency and the type of ridges that are on these cones and the frequency that the little bridge vibrates at that is able to amplify to this extent. And then we took that and made MEMS? That's amazing. Literally, actually, is kind of what happened. So they figured out this fly in like 1997, and we're kind of covering the history of the fly here. And in 2013, a paper in Scientific Reports went more into detail about how this fly is able to do what it does. And then it replicated it in this small synthetic device. So they made a mini sensor and they discovered that they had detected the highest sound localization capacity ever just by recreating this.

28:14And then since then, people have improved, you know, until today to have really, really strong directional MEMS that you can see, you know, in your cell phone. And they hope to fine-tune it even more, but the vocabulary that they used for that is really technical. So I'm not quite sure about the acoustic tuning, but they're trying to get better. So MEMS didn't come from the fly, but they got improved by the fly starting in 2013. I believe the original MEMS did inspire from the fly. Were also inspired by the fly. Okay, cool. But the directionality that you're talking about certainly would be helpful in noise canceling.

28:54And one of the things that has become better in phones since 2013 is the ability to talk on them in a loud room and people still be able to understand what you're saying. Yeah. And they're saying also to put this in like VR devices, basically things where you're trying to not pick up as much background sound. So now you can think that you have a little teeny tiny fly to think for your microphones. Don't swat that fly. Learn from it. Exactly. Dr. Nicky, thank you so, so much for explaining this to us. If folks want to find more of what you do, where should you go? They should fly over to my website.

29:30It's NicoleAckermans.com. I'll hopefully try and get this story up there soon. And I'm at the same handle on Blue Sky where you can follow my long tweets about this cool animal facts I found out and learn about why ants have two butts. Fantastic. I really want to know more about the butts. All right. Thanks, Dr. Nikki. Bye. I mean, what a tease. Tom, do you really want to know more about ant butts? I do. I do. I mean, don't worms have like three hearts? Yeah. Nature is a lot of fun. I feel so inadequate after today's show. Only one butt, one heart, and a fleshy hand with one opposable thumb. Yeah.

30:07Yeah. Humans, we suck. We've got a lot of work to do. But as humans, we like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. You might not be human, but most of you are. Today, Lord Mulger has an idea for Microsoft. Yeah, we were talking about OpenAI following Microsoft and saying, hey, we're going to make sure that whatever electricity we use for our data centers is sourced in a way that doesn't cause you to pay more for electricity. Lord Molgar wrote, that's nice that Microsoft is committed to covering their full electricity cost for operating its data centers to ease public concern that their AI infrastructure expansion will increase utility rates touting civic responsibilities.

30:46Can they and the rest of the companies building AI infrastructure also alleviate the cost of RAM to the public? Because they are causing a supply and demand issue there as well. I would like to upgrade the RAM in my PC. Thanks. Lord, you're not alone. I'm sure there are people applauding you out there right now, Shane. Yeah, exactly. Shortage is big companies. It's not just electric bills, although that's very important. It's a lot of stuff. Yeah. You're taking our RAM. My first reaction was like, well, that's different. But the more I thought about it, the less different it is. Like one of the things with a power utility is that it's very hard to add capacity fast.

31:28That's true of RAM, too. It's very hard to add capacity to build more RAM fast. So I don't know. Maybe Lord Bulgar is on to something. Maybe we should put a little heat on OpenAI and Microsoft and Google and Amazon. Like, hey, can you help bring on some more RAM capacity somehow? That'd be great, too. I'm not against it. I'm just saying. Yeah. You know, not speaking for everybody, but I can imagine a world where, you know, the public, general public says, we know that 2.7 is coming out soon, but we'd like RAM instead. Can you maybe just delay 2.7 so we get the RAM? Well, you might be thinking about something similar to this or something different altogether.

32:08If you have insight into a story where you want us to talk about something, looking forward, share that with us. feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Thanks again to Dr. Nikki and Lord Molgar for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You're the folks who keep us in business. If you haven't become a Substack supporter or a patron yet, you can get the show ad free at dtns.substack.com or patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. you have enjoyed this program.

From the publisher

YouTube’s yearly creator letter ends with AI promises, and vertical video dreams. Plus a robot hand that can do way more on its own than you can with your clumsy two attached flesh hands.


Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, and Dr Niki.


Links to stories discussed in this episoe can be found here.

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