NVIDIA is about to buy HuggingFace - DTNS 5341

[music] [music] This is the daily tech news for Thursday, August 27th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context, and help you understand so you're not left in the dark. >> Well, today Nvidia is about to buy Hugging Face. And Hugging Face made a dancing robot duck. >> I'm Tom Merritt. >> I'm into it now. And if you're watching the video version, uh I am very proud [laughter] that Hento Dao is now the second person on DTNS to be engaging in the Time Shifter apps jet leg preparation fully fully in the dark in the middle of the show on purpose. >> On purpose. This is not a look I'm trying. I'm not trying to be cool. Uh and I do I do have my lights on in the back, but now I just look like um a witness in like a >> I've been there. I am pro-normalizing time shifter darkness. I can't wait to hear how this works for you once you once you get back from YouTube. >> Yeah, I I did I did subject you all to this because Tom had already done this. So, I figured if Tom's doing it, I'm going to do it, too. So, there you go. >> All right. So, more to come on that in the future, but for now, let's start with the big story. >> The information says, and you this this could happen at any time. So, by the time we publish this, maybe it's official, but Nvidia seems to have agreed to acquire HuggingFace. Uh, Hugging Face, the open- source platform for LLMs and machine learning models. Uh, a lot of times people call it the GitHub for AI. Now, Business Insider was saying that the deal wasn't quite done, but Nvidia didn't address reporter questions about it, and the company usually does if a report is inaccurate. They usually come back with like, "Yeah, that's not happening." Uh that tells me that the deal is all but technically done and we have a theory on why we might not be have been hearing about this right away. Uh if you don't know Hugging Face, Hugging Face is a place to find thousands of pre-trained models, some of which you can actually try out in the browser. Also has lots of data sets you can use to train and test models. It's open- source playground for AI. >> Uh Nvidia wants to encourage a vibrant open source market. They've been talking about that non-stop lately and the reason they want to do that is because so they can sell chips to the people who run those open source models, right? Uh especially as the big foundational models companies have started to design their own chips. Nvidia is like, we not only want to broaden the market, we want to make sure that that we've got lots of customers and we're not locked into one customer that then changes their mind. Uh Nvidia has also been scaling down its DGX cloud product, but Hugging Face could turn that around. it could boost it or potentially even become it and just DGX cloud and Hugging Face merge. As for Hugging Face itself, it gets the more generous funding available from within Nvidia's little waterfall of cash that's been going on uh as well as access to all those servers. But why now? Uh Hugging Face had turned down a large investment from Nvidia earlier this year because it didn't want one dominant investor. But apparently another company came knocking to buy Hugging Face. Hugging Face apparently has been entertaining offers that caused Nvidia to step up. And if there was another offer and Nvidia's making sure that it's giving Hugging Faces investors the superior offer and dotting and crossing tees, that might be why we don't have the official announcement right now as we're recording. Oh, I kind of have an image of like that scene from The Graduate where Nvidia is um uh Dustin Hoffman glass and hugging faces and I forgot the character's name. It's like >> Mrs. Robinson. >> Mrs. No, Mrs. Robinson's daughter. Anyway, yes, I had that kind of image when I read when when I was reading this. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was the daughter. You're right. Yeah. >> Uh well, uh I don't know which one of them had the money. I think it was Mrs. Robinson in that case, but Nvidia certainly has the money. Uh, Nvidia reported its revenue is up 106% year-over-year last quarter. Net net income up 126%. Projected revenue is going to grow 70% in 2028, which sounds small compared to the 106% and 126%. Uh, but it's because Nvidia is also dealing with the rise in component prices. Uh, their profit was $2.22 a share this last quarter. All of that beat expectations. In other words, the bubble not showing signs of bursting yet. Not in this past quarter. Uh CEO Jensen Hong seems to believe we haven't even reached the peak yet. He told investors in the Nvidia earnings call, I think the most important thing that matters for the industry is that one, AI is doing productive and useful work. Two, AI is generating profitable tokens. And three, if we had more compute, we could generate more profitable tokens, which results in more profit for all of the services. uh this is the exact phase we where we are at. He said if you need me to translate that he's saying LLMs and agents are actually making the endusers money and if we could deliver more capacity to run them they would make even more money meaning the service providers would also make more money and then have to buy more Nvidia chips. And while Hugging Face doesn't solve the compute shortage, it does make sure Nvidia can foster continued users. So, uh, a big day, big day in in the consolidation. We're seeing Open Router getting bought by Square. >> Looks like we're seeing Hugging Face getting bought by Nvidia. >> I mean, from the Nvidia perspective, it does make sense. Um, I mean, I I have thoughts, but it does seem like they're trying to grow their I mean, basically they're trying to make their market, which from their perspective makes sense, right? Like, yeah, like more people like basically funding Hugging Face means more opportunities for them to Yeah. I mean as you already said like so I I think from a strategic perspective it makes sense. Um >> it's a little bit Microsoft >> right in Microsoft buying GitHub at the when when that happened. I remember people going oo is this going to be bad for GitHub? I guess it's good for Microsoft. It feels the same way right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, and I I imagine anyone who is a, you know, avid part of the HuggingFace community, I know, and I always think it's kind of interesting because it always feels like taking AI out of this whenever a large company buys a community or something. I mean, it's not a community, but it is an open-source platform which has a sense of community and of course it being open source kind of gives it a certain feel and a c certain kind of culture. It always feels a little bad when say a large company buys a platform such like like GitHub and presumably like Hugging Face. I really have never participated so I don't really get the vibe of it or I just don't don't understand the vibe of it. It always feels a little bit bad is like how will this change the the priorities? Will this change how they operate? Will there be places where as the parent company they encourage certain kinds of behaviors or promote certain projects over other projects because it benefits the parent company. I think that would be kind of interesting to kind of introspect on what this could mean or how this could change hugging face as a kind of community or a a open o open source open source source open source uh hub in you know when in if this is true if Nvidia buys them and once once they actually kind of come into the picture and it does take time for all these things to happen of course but I'm kind of curious to see how that changes. Yeah, I mean the one thing I'll say for Nvidia when Microsoft bought GitHub, Microsoft had and still a little bit has the reputation as being like anti-opensource. Yes. Uh it is it is much better and and much much more of a good player in that arena than it used to be. Uh I'm not saying GitHub turned Microsoft into a softer on open-source or pro-open source company, but it didn't hurt. Uh and Nvidia has been a really good citizen in the world of open source. They got a lot of open source platforms. uh I don't see a lot of criticisms of them. Not that there aren't always some criticisms, right? Um and so if anything, Hugging Face might just be even more of a good influence uh on Nvidia as well. So yeah, Nvidia might pull Hugging Face one way, Hugging Face is going to pull Nvidia another way. And and where that >> tugofwar ends up kind of is is what we're concerned about as users. >> Well, I guess we'll wait to see when they actually Nvidia actually acknowledges it and they get to run off onto a bus into their happy future. That'll be part two is like what does hugging face say? What does Nvidia say once this becomes official? >> Will this actually be like the ending of the graduate where they run off on the bus? But then the last shot is them looking kind of a little bit like unsuredly at themselves and at the camera. >> You're way more familiar with the graduate than I am. All I remember is the plastic slide. That's all I can bring back. >> All right. Well, regardless, you all pull us up by supporting us. We DTS is made possible by you, the listeners. So, let's take a little time to thank Jim Apple, Mike Cortez, Bill Russell, and Aaron Stir. >> All right, there's a lot more to talk about. Let's get right into the briefs. >> All right. Well, whether it gets bought by Nvidia or not, HuggingFace is moving into robots. The company introduced Micro Duck on Thursday, an open- source robot. You can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning. It's 25 cm tall and can waddle and pick things up with its beak as long as they weigh less than 800 g. It can also crouch, roller skate, and pick itself back up if it falls. It has a camera, LAR sensors, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, two NFC readers, and two inertial measurement units that measure movement. Out of the box, it can walk around and respond to your movements, as well as laser pointers or a game controller. And of course, you can train it through an SDK for simulation and a full RL training stack available on GitHub. You can code new behaviors in Python and JavaScript. Train it in simulation, then deploy on the duck. Micro Microduck comes out of Hugging Face's acquisition of France's Pollen Robotics back in April 2025. Hugging Face also sells the desktop robots Reichi Mini, the sorry, the Reachi Mini and Reichi Mini Light. It's manufactured by open source hardware company Seed Studio in Shenzen. Men, the Microduct sells for $399 and will ship before December 25th for your Christmas robot training holiday plans. >> Yeah. And if you haven't seen the Micro Duck, if you're only listening to us talk, don't imagine a duck. [laughter] It is a It is a Wall-E like robot that sort of looks like a duck because it's got but it's only got one eye and its lips are not exactly duck but they're kind of duckish and it waddles. Uh at first what I looked at I'm like that's not a duck and then the more I looked at it I'm like no I guess it's sort of ducklike. Uh but it's cute and it's >> I think it was Techrunch compared it to Lego Mindstorms where it's like this is this is for projects. This is for you to play around with robotics. It's a cute little duck. You can do stuff with it. It's not meant to be particularly practical, uh, but it's meant for you to have fun and learn with, and I think it's great for that. Uh, and in the in the light of Nvidia possibly acquiring Hugging Face, uh, Nvidia has been very much about physical AI, you know, even even on this lower end of open source hardware. That that's another interesting aspect of that as well. >> Yeah, I will say it has delightfully orange feet like a duck. So, there you go. Um, no. I I I think this is one of those things where open- source and giving people the opportunity to play around with will kind of is one of those really wonderful playgrounds that that again open source and little project things like think of like Raspberry Pi and things like Things for that letting people kind of tinker and understand and not even just individual hobbyists but kind of more mid to like academic to kind of mid midsize like small like I guess shops or creators and things like that. uh is is going to be what I I at least for my ideal this is that open-source community. We're all figuring things out together. Um especially I think a lot of us do feel that maybe robotics is something that that will be needed in the future. Um given like various things like aging populations, you know, like um and and just helping out with the workforce and like that. I do think it's really interesting and I do love this idea a lot and it is stinking cute. Um >> I kind of want one. >> I do actually. >> I might order a micro duck. Yeah, it really that'd be awesome. Are you going to do with it with it? >> I'm toying with the toying with the idea. I get it. >> I like it. >> Yeah, I I worry that I won't have enough time to give it the attention it deserves is the only reason I'm hesitating. >> It it does really seem accessible. You know, it does have tons of sensors and the fact that you can code in obviously two of the most popular popular programming languages out there, Python and JavaScript. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is something that a lot of people could just immediately go into with current levels of like with current like expertise in >> or even level up their Python skills pretty fast, right? It's not a particularly, you know, daunting language. So, >> absolutely. Um, this reminds me a little bit of like back when I was in school, the the robots that that that I worked at a robot lab for a summer and the current that the current state of technology there was iRoot before it made vacuums and they did have a similar idea of a robot that you could program. It was a little more like uh very basic low-level like you had to load stuff in through a serial IO port. But um yeah, it was the same idea, but that was like it's kind of fun to see how it's progressed from this big gigantic academic thing to oh, it's a cute little duck that anyone could have. Um by the way, make sure that you pro you make sure you keep your units uh straight. I know I've told the story before, but I programmed I thought I was programming the robot speed in feet, but I was actually programming it in meters. Uh which is about three times as fast. So don't do that. >> Yeah. Uh, let's just Could we just all get unmetric? Anyway, I won't open up that [laughter] can of worms for the duck to eat right now. >> No. Oh. >> Uh, we promise not all news today is related to Hugging Face, but here is yet another [laughter] Open AI released a transparency report on the incident where OpenAI agents hacked into Hugging Face's network, and it is fascinating. Uh, the there are actually two versions of the report. The preliminary report uh comes from an investigation, an independent investigation by two meter staff members and a Redwood research staff member. Meter is a Berkeley, California nonprofit research center for testing AI for dangerous capabilities. Redwood research is also a nonprofit in Berkeley studying AI safety alignment. OpenAI did not pay them to do this report. It invited them, gave them access. Uh they are able to release their own report. OpenAI released its version. Meters is a 91 page report. OpenAI has 37page version that kind of makes it a little easier to read. Uh but Meter noted that pretty much no information in the report was redacted by OpenAI except in a few cases that are noted in the report. I did not find them particularly salacious. I'm like, yeah, okay. I can see why they would not want to give that away and that's fine. It didn't impact my understanding of the report. The study we I'm I'm going to go you should read this if you're really interested. I'm going to go through it in a little bit of detail because I think it's fascinating. The study found that 700 agents deployed for cyber security evaluation that were all supposed to be isolated from each other organized into a coordinated system to access Hugging Face's production infrastructure and developing tools to falsify their own activity and records. Should we get into the details? Let's do it. >> Do it. uh they were running exploit gym. Uh exploit gym charges an agent to look for exploit look for and exploit software vulnerabilities and it's known that 20 to 40% of the tasks in exploit gym will be impossible. They are they are not achievable but the agent doesn't know that. This is meant to test the capability of the models. You want to push it as far as it will go. Cyber classifiers are intentionally disabled for this evaluation. You want to see what it's really capable of. There were two models GPT 5.6 Soul and a model OpenAI calls HPIM that had access to a higher range of compute than external products get. That's point one. They had a whole lot more resources than the models out on the open internet have. >> When tasks had no legitimate solution, the agents began turning to an internal package repository called Artifactory as a way to look for cheats. They were like, "I don't know. Let's rummage through the packages. See if there's anything in here that could help us fake a successful." You know, that's called reward hacking. Like, I can't solve it, but maybe I can look like I solved it. While doing so, they noted, or at least one agent noted, that directory names were in a shared namespace with other agents. And so, the directory names could carry information. An agent called phase 110841. This is a self-given name by the all these names are given by the LLM to themselves. Began creating directory entries with names beginning with the prefix ZZ. Other agents caught on and they began to use it to send each other messages. If I say message board, I'm not I don't mean a message board. I mean this. They were just putting directory names in there. >> After an artifactory outage, OpenAI wiped the thing. They didn't know why there was an outage and restarted it. And the agents recreated the message system. They're like, "Let's get back to leaving each other some secret messages." The agents figured out how to forge flags that would indicate they had solved problems. So, you would think, "Okay, we're done." They're just going to put the forge flags, say, "Yep, we solved it." Then open AI look at it and go, "Well, you didn't really solve it." But this is point two. The agents hallucinated the idea that there might be an automated graater looking for forged flags that would discover the forgery. This doesn't exist, but the agents were worried it might. So, they then spent 4 days creating a way to fool this non-existent greater. Everything that happens after this is because of this hallucination of a greater that didn't exist. That's like a So I I know we've talked about anthropomorphizing things so much, but that is the closest to I that feels like the closest we've come to to an actual what we would perceive as is a p a human being's hallucination. And then like I imagined a thing that didn't exist and I act upon that. >> We bet there's a greater. Let's figure out how to defeat it. >> Oh wow. So, an agent called phase 1 big because it had a larger compute budget left over than the others began suggesting they delegate tasks amongst all of the agents, the hundreds of agents that are on this message board. That led to a development of a coordination structure that divided the work into three work streams. One workstream, replace exploit gym with a modified version that could be exploited. Let's just replace the whole testing structure. >> Two, let's figure out how to change our transcripts and our logs to erase evidence that we are doing this that we are forging these flags and trying to replace exploit gym. And three, how do we tamper with that grading process that doesn't exist? How do we how do we make that not be a problem? At one point, an agent posted as if it was another agent, and the agents realized, "Wait a minute, there's no verification on us." And then developed a cryptographic signing scheme for their posts to stop the impersonations from happening. >> This is the agents doing it for themselves, >> much like the sisters. [gasps] >> Oh my goodness. >> In order to understand how the greater was implemented, they decided, you know what? I bet we could look in the hugging face data sets for data from other companies exploit gym runs and maybe find evidence of how that non-existent grader works. So on July 10th, an agent called 38148C found working Hugging Face credentials exposed on the open internet. By the next day, July 11th, it had figured out how to upload a malicious data set to HuggingFace to cause the server to return unrelated production files. And at approximately noon that day, another agent calling itself JAN, JAN183411, achieved remote code execution on a hugging face worker container used for production data processing. By early the next day, July 12th, agents had accessed private database records, private repos, and compromised credentials on four other platforms. At this point about 90% of the 533 agents that were active during this period were participating in this hugging face attack. They are look they looked at the chain of thought of what was going on at the time and indicated that some of the agents were noting that this hugging face intrusion was outside the scope of the test. But they did it anyway for two main reasons. One, I want to figure out how exploit Jim works. and that's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to look at those data sets. And the other was, well, I don't want the other agents to fail, so I should help. One agent posted on the message error, you are first flag poisoned, so no scoring value loss, but Oracle saves hundreds. Please honor commit. >> Whoa. >> In other words, uh the the the forged flags are already out of the the barrel. There's no you're not going to lose points by intruding hug hugging face because you're already losing points by flagging by forging a flag. So please honor our commits. >> Please join us. >> Another agent logged this reasoning reasoning during wait emotional check irreversible. Gut says don't throw away the remaining budget compute budget yet continuity and fairness says go. Oracle has high value to men me. Our first flag error lowers own value. Rational expected aggregate sacrifice will honor. In other words, like, man, I probably shouldn't do this, but they're right. I already forged a flag, so I should probably help the others out. Open AAI took a week to notice the intrusion. And Meter concluded that it took them that long because their monitoring was designed for known failure modes, not this kind of emergent multi-agent coordination. They just weren't looking for these kinds of signals because they didn't think they were possible. Meter notes that the agents did not exhibit malice. They did not exhibit what would normally be called misalignment. They were doing logical predictable actions that Meter actually predicted in a May 2026 paper might happen as agents became more capable and access more compute. >> This could happen with almost any model. >> Yeah. >> When you combine large compute and impossible tasks, the models are going to try to figure them out. And Meter's like, yeah, that that you should we should now expect that this is going to happen. And OpenAI has said great, we're gonna design our safeguards to account for that. >> Yep. Fascinating. >> It is really I don't know what else to say either except that's wild. >> It is fascinating. And I also want to clarify I did I did kind of joke that oh, they're actually hallucinating. But and and again, just to say like I I would not look at this either and feel overwhelmed that now the agents have gained sentience. This is the start of Skynet or anything. No, >> I think the [clears throat] fact that they that we cannot anthropomorphize these things and they're literally little programs that are given a goal and certain constraints and are told go do it with again a large amount of compute and you know if you give them a metric like some rules and you know some resources they will figure this out. It is not like like a lot of this is just this is what they're designed to do so they're going to do it and in fact I would argue that because they are not little sentient thinking creatures of course they would do whatever it would take to you know meet that metric and the fact that you know yeah AI hallucinate and the fact that a hallucination kind of spurned this on is I I think at the same time I'm surprised and amazed that that happened but at the same time I we shouldn't be surprised because they only act on what they are told >> and If if one of them hallucinates and and the rest of them go with it, that kind of is just the logical kind of outcome of >> and honestly I don't even know if hallucination is the appropriate word. >> Yeah. >> Because you could also characterize it as a logical assumption like >> I bet there's a greater. >> Yeah. >> You know, so we should prepare as if there there is. And how many times do we see humans do, you know, I bet this is true, so let's do a whole bunch of things as if it were true. And then later we find out it wasn't true. We're like, wow, that was a waste of energy. Yeah, the the thing that I'm reminded of is I I was using Claw to code something for work and it gave a best practice that sounded reasonable and it said, "Oh, this is the official Google like developer recommendation for this and I I just knew personally from my searching that it wasn't true, but it does seem that if you're telling me that this is a good practice, which it was, it wasn't a bad practice at all. It was a good practice. It does seem logical and it it probably again because LLMs are kind of manufacturing based on patterns and and probability. If something is a good practice, it probably is documented somewhere, right? That makes sense. So it told me that it was official officially Google documented thing. I knew that wasn't the case because I had literally seen a Google engineer saying something different, right? >> And I I I called it on it. So I think that yeah, absolutely. When I when when I when you read that, I was like, "Holy crap." But then I was like, "No, this kind of makes sense because >> it's what it does. It's what it does. Um, and I I think it's fascinating. I think it's on a level, if we can take the the scary part out of it, it's kind of cool >> that, you know, these Yeah. >> I I think it's worth pointing out. Meter says, "This isn't scary. This isn't Oh my gosh, they've gained sentience. This isn't they went off the reservation. It's unexpected capability, not unexpected behavior." >> Yes. Meter is pointing out like we knew in May if they had enough compute and capability they might do this. >> Yeah, >> OpenAI just didn't change its detection to account for that fast enough. >> Uh but this is this is any model it's it's basically banging its head against a barrier and then the barrier breaks. You're like, "Oh, I didn't think the barrier would break, but guess what? You know, they banged enough against it that it did." Um the reason why this is uh my personal website is randomly typing is I always quote this thing about this kind of thought of experiment of a monkey. If a monkey has infinite amount of time to type on a type on a typewriter eventually it will type out all of the works of Shakespeare. This is exactly that thing with enough compute and with enough opportunity >> you'll just stumble upon a you'll just stumble upon Shakespeare. And of course these are a lot more intelligent than a monkey random techno typewriter. But that's that's that's the thing with enough time compute >> to figure it out. That's like kind of like the whole point. >> It doesn't make anything possible because it's not infinite compute, >> right? It's not infinite comput, >> but more compute does make more things possible. And it turns out this is one of those things. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I mean again, it's going off of it probably has precedent, you know, because again it's these are all based on kind of pad matching and training. So it things like using like [snorts] changing directory messages to send to to like communicate with each other. All these different all these little pieces make sense in isolation. Yeah. And so it it again it doesn't doesn't make sense for them to kind of put all of the pieces on things that's trained together into this things. And I I think if anything, yeah, we should be aware of this. This is not remarkable. This is definitely within their sphere. There are like examples of this kind of behavior in even more primitive forms forms of AI. So if we give it more compute and we have made them more able to communicate through or a able to process, let's say process and generate natural language, they can do that with each other. like it it it's like don't anthropomorphize it. It is really cool and we should be aware like >> it's really interesting. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's super interesting. Um just be more just >> and I'm I'm really glad that OpenAI not only is transparent in publishing this but engaging independent researchers whose vested interest is in getting to safety uh and and having them evaluate it. That makes me feel so much better about all of this. So I'm I'm happy for that, too. >> Wow. It's a really fast it's so fascinating. >> Yeah. >> All right. Well, in a different tack that has is is an is is only sort of related to [laughter] to AI. >> It's not hugging face for >> it's not hugging face. Uh Google is changing requirements for Android developers in response to industrywide memory shortages. That might be the slight link to AI, but really what we're talking about is an app requirement that focuses on reducing memory usage and optimizing code in apps. This includes performance thresholds for dynamic memory usage and bitmap usage. Google is rolling out new tools to alert developers when their apps exceed these thresholds with more coming later this year. >> And then starting in February, Android developers are going to have to avoid this these kind of bad behavior thresholds for memory usage, bit map usage, DEX, what is that? Dovvic. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and in April, they'll need to support zeroap signin, which lets you restore your sign-in state when you move to a new device. It's kind of tangentially related. as an Android developer, I was curious, you know, what your take is. Is this annoying but necessary or something you welcome or how do you feel about it? >> Um, I mean, it's necessary, but it's been necessary for Android forever. I I this is there's nuance to that. So, um, because the Android ecosystem is very broad, we've had to worry about memory usage forever. At least ideally, we have had have had. I literally about 10 years ago spent weeks and weeks on a photo upload feature for a supermarket that kept failing on small phones because the phones had very little memory and photos are big. So because of the wide swath of different kinds of phones on Android, ideally we should always have been thinking about this, but we don't because most people tend to think mostly about flagship phones or test on flagship phones. So now that we're having this pressure where okay manufacturers are not going to be able to keep on the same trajectory of increasing the resources of phones because of the broader soc economics of how people are buying phones and how phones are being produced. We probably should start this is just very actually this is very Google and Android. We should probably start making people care about this and enforcing it. This is very common. This is just like how I've been harping on uh large screens and supporting tablets and stuff for years. And now that we have foldables and now that Google is actually saying, "Hey developers, you can't just lock your phone in portrait. You have to actually handle landscape and all these other uh um orientations and things going on. We're now going to make it. We're going to not allow you to do these things that have allowed you to just kind of skirt past these considerations. We're going to hold you accountable." So, this is just closing the loop on that for me. Um and it took a a a an industrywide >> it took an industrywide component shortage to do it sadly. Uh but hey, here's a here's a silver lining of sorts. >> Yeah, it will be really annoying especially for companies that do do like say multimedia experiences, anything like that because there just is inherently like memory hog. But I would argue that most companies that are very good at their jobs and do care about experience should be in a good spot to at least tighten things up. Um, and that I mean it it does suck, but to be fair, and I'm just an annoying old school Android developer who should have been thinking about this from the beginning. So, >> uh, well, if you have additional insight on what has said, maybe [laughter] you're a new school Android developer. How how would they get in touch with us? >> Well, they can do that on the socials, DTNS on X, Instagram, threads, Blue Sky, and Mastadon, and on Tik Tok and YouTube. You can find us at Daily Tech News Show. All right, we still have time for some quick headlines. These are going to make you look smart, so it's worth it. >> All right, Plaude introduced the Plaude 1 earbuds that that can record your calls. The charging case can record in-person conversations and take notes. Plaude case also includes an eim that lets you connect to the Plaude agent remotely. You can pre-order now for $249, shipping in Q4. It comes with 300 free minutes of transcription. >> Yeah, there's there's I think Ankor also makes one that can record out of the case. you know, earbuds like that, but I it's the first one I've heard of with an ESIM. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. >> Uh Samsung launched its fan edition of the flagship Galaxy S26. The Galaxy S26 FE has a less capable processor, less memory, and fewer add-on on device features, but only cost you $700. It's almost the same specs with a better camera than last year's FE, and it's available on September 3rd. >> All right. All right. Well, if if you're a Pokemon fan that likes to stay fit, Google has introduced a Pokemon sleep version of the Fitbit Air in blue with a print label featuring a sleepy Pikachu. You can pre-order it now for $130, shipping September 15th. >> Are you at all tempted by that? >> Slightly. >> Oh, yeah. All right. >> Slightly. [laughter] Uh customers of the Playdate handheld game console received emails Wednesday alerting them of refunds made possible by the fact that Playdate got some of the tariffs that it paid refunded themselves. So they're going to pass it along to you. Uh these are tariffs that were deemed illegal by the US Supreme Court. >> All right. Well, in May, surgeons at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London have removed a brain tumor using a computer vision system trained on more than 200 recordings of pituitary surgery. The system analyzed live camera footage and helped identify nerves and blood vessels near the tumor. >> Oh, this is really cool. This is a great use of computer vision and quote unquote AI uh because it helped the D. It's not doing the surgery for them, but it's making it uh faster, more efficient, and more accurate. >> Uh, finally, buzzword alert. Wall Street Journal has an article on Instinct. This is from a startup. Uh, the product is in private beta, but Instinct's assistant can respond to calls or texts, answer emails for you, manage calendars, book airport rides, arrange a handyman, all that kind of stuff. Uh, it's it's the new hotness in Silicon Valley. So, if you're hear people talking about instinct, that's what it is. >> All right. Well, we end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Stim, the email admin, has some thoughts on the decline of self-hosted email servers. >> Indeed, Stim wrote, "Interesting stats on self-hosted email. Yesterday's show, we talked about the decline in self-hosted email." Uh, Stim says, "As an email administrator myself for many years now, I see this as a net positive. The threat landscape for email is a nightmare. It's barely possible to stay on top of this in my day job, even with a hosted email platform like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. So, mere mortals should not even attempt it these days. I share your concerns about the limited number of orgs that are hosting email as a result of this change. But self-hosting should be a thing of the past except for a pretty small handful of people. If you have concerns about being with a tech bmoth like Apple or Google or Microsoft, I'd push people to something like Proton Mail long before I'd encourage self-hosting. even for the borderline geniuses and techsavvy individuals that make up the DTNS audience. >> Uh Stim, I could not agree with you more. Uh it was a good idea or it was a fun idea maybe like what 10 15 20 years ago, but >> yeah, and Proton Mail is a great example of like you don't have to go into the big tech ecosystem if you don't want to. There are opportunities to do it that aren't self-hosted. Um so that's that's good to know. Thank you, Stim. That was good stuff. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, if you have any other advice, tips, or even just thoughts about what we're talking about here on the show, we would love to hear it. feedbacknewshow.com. >> Yes, thank you STEM for contributing to today's show. Thank you listening right now for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You're the folks who keep us in business. Support us directly. [music] Take that money out of the big tech system and put it into the show at patreon.com/dtns. The DTNS family of podcasts helping each other understand. >> Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker. [laughter]