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Tech News Weekly 382: Anticipating Samsung's Home Robot
01:08:06
Waymo, Digg.com, Apple's Siri
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- [00:00]
Micah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch is here. We talk about a waymo getting stuck in a Chick Fil a drive thru. Then we head back into the early web as we talk about Digg and our early experiences there before another story of the week about Apple and its fumbled Siri launch. Then Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of the Verge stops by to tell us about Bali. That's Samsung's upcoming home robot. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.
- [00:36]
Unknown
This is Twit.
- [00:40]
Micah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 382 with Amanda Silberling and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, April 10, 2025, anticipating Samsung's home robot. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Micah Sargent and I am joined on this episode on the second Thursday of the month by TechCrunch's own Amanda Silberling. Welcome back, Amanda.
- [01:13]
Amanda Silberling
Hello. Happy second Thursday of the month.
- [01:16]
Micah Sargent
Happy second Thursday of the month to you. Perhaps we should have like a special observance on these the second Thursdays. A little lighting of incense or something.
- [01:25]
Amanda Silberling
The observances. Listening to this podcast.
- [01:28]
Micah Sargent
There. There you go. That is the observance. Observe our podcast for people who are observing for the first time. Welcome. We're happy to have you. For those who are returning, thank you for being here. Again, this is the part of the show where we share our stories of the week, the stories that are of interest to us that we think you all should know about. So without further ado, why don't you kick things off, Amanda?
- [01:56]
Amanda Silberling
All right, so if anyone's been following the news this week, it's been a little distressing. So I thought let's do a silly one.
- [02:04]
Micah Sargent
Let's do a silly one.
- [02:06]
Amanda Silberling
So I want to talk about a story that happened this week in which a Waymo robo taxi got stuck in a Chick Fil a drive through in Santa Monica, California.
- [02:19]
Micah Sargent
Okay, so first and foremost, just to clarify, someone asked the Waymo to go to a drive through.
- [02:30]
Amanda Silberling
It seems that there wasn't any passengers in it, but the waymos still drive around even when there's not passengers because like they have to get to places to pick up the next passengers. But maybe the concept of drive thru is just like not really hitting the Waymo. So it got stuck in a Chick Fil a drive through and it caused a traffic jam and one person that Was interviewed by the local radio station. There was like, I've been in the driving the drive thru line for 30 minutes and like, at what point like do people wait 30 minutes for chick fil a drive thru?
- [03:07]
Micah Sargent
I was about to say that, that seems. And it was 9:30pm when it happened. So this is like a late night. I didn't even know Chick Fil A was open that late. I thought you had to get home to, you know, do your evening prayers. And so I'm surprised that Chick Fil A still open at 9:30pm but so it kicked off at 9:30pm and then you're just waiting and waiting and waiting. I would love to know what everybody in line was ordering. Maybe there's something there that's just like super. It's too good. We can't pass up on it. But I don't know, Chick Fil A doesn't give like Taco Bell or one of those that's sort of the in and out that's like that late night stop because you've just been out with friends or whatever. Interesting.
- [03:47]
Amanda Silberling
Yeah. Chick Fil A is giving very. We don't open on Sundays.
- [03:51]
Micah Sargent
Yes, exactly. So I'm surprised that it's open so late and I am surprised that people are waiting as long as they are. But hey, if you're hungry, you're hungry. It's like again, this is so odd to me because I would love to know the series of events that led up to this car getting stuck there. Like was it its programming to also capture a building? And so it saw. Oh, here's a. That I have yet to capture. Or we only have so much data on it. So we're going to go this way and. And do this and do this. Or are we starting to train our autonomous vehicles on being able to drive through? Drive throughs? Because eventually you would want to be able to do that, right? You want to beckon one to go get your Taco Bell?
- [04:42]
Unknown
I would, yeah.
- [04:43]
Amanda Silberling
I mean, I guess like eventually, I don't know, like could. Instead of like people delivering food, do you just like get away mode to bring you food? That feels like kind of a waste. But, um.
- [04:54]
Micah Sargent
Oh, can you just have him chuck it into the. Yeah, the Waymo drives up, the window rolls down, you chuck it into the Waymo and then it drives to you and you get your food. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. And they could turn up the heat really high in the car because there's no human inside. So it keeps the food hot.
- [05:08]
Amanda Silberling
So true. So True. I think we can like glean some things about how this works based on other issues that Waymos have had recently. In the last year there was a Waymo that got stuck in a roundabout loop where it just kept around the roundabout, never exited the roundabout, just went round and round and round and then there was in a parking lot of Waymos. They all started honking at each other in the early morning, which I'm sure the people living in that neighborhood were definitely thrilled with and definitely felt really great about Waymo after that. And there was also an incident where a Waymo stalled in front of Kamala Harris's motorcade. So yeah, I don't know, maybe the Waymos have a political agenda and they're like stop.
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Micah Sargent
Yeah. And also here's an annoying thing that always bothers me when a local news station has a video about a thing. They love to include all of the information in the video but not all of the information in the article that accompanies the video. According to to our own Burke in the chat who's been able to see a little bit more, the passenger of the Waymo got out of the the Waymo before it came to the drive thru. But there wasn't enough space for the car to turn out and away from the drive through lane and ended up getting stuck in it. So again that must have been an on and popping 9:30pm chick fil a period where there were because I've, I've driven past an in and out where the drive thru lane has now exited onto the street or has, you know, sort of overflowed onto the street. So I guess I could see the, the Waymo getting stuck in that way. But yeah, you've talked about some of the other times when Waymo vehicles have gotten stuck and I think that you know, it's particularly concerning in the case of a, of a presidential candidate. But overall, in the same way that it's human learning lessons, I think it's also non human learning lessons and you can take from this some, some bit of knowledge I will share. A shame of mine that was very important for me to learn and also involved fast food when I in Missouri where I'm from and I think it works this way in a lot of places. But when you turn 15, unless you live on a farm, in which case you can be younger, but when you turn 15 and you live in the city, you can get your license or your permit at 15 and for the next like year you are supposed to dry, you can drive the car but you have to have a Full licensed person, 21 or older with you. And the idea is that that's how you kind of get your. Your driving lessons. You're not required to take any sort of driver's ed or anything like that. And so I'm 15, and I'm driving our family van, and we are going to Wendy's, and we get to the drive through, and I'm going forward into the drive through. We do the little. Okay here. We're ordering, we're talking into the speaker. But now it comes time to turn the van and go around the corner to the window. Well, I overturned the steering wheel so that the van was facing the building instead. So if we're looking at it, it's facing the building instead of facing head on to go through the line. At which point my anxiety climbs through the roof. And I decide there's no possible way I can fix this. If I continue to drive, I will drive into the Wendy's. Wendy's and everyone will die.
- [09:15]
Amanda Silberling
Like, into the atrium when they used to have, like, the sunrooms.
- [09:18]
Micah Sargent
I'm like, it's over now. This is over. So my mom, who is in the passenger seat, because again, I'm 15, is going, no, Micah, just turn the steering wheel. It's fine. Just turn this. No, I can't. It's not happening. I'm going to kill everybody. So she. Or no, I have to get out of. I just like, I completely. Nope. Out. I say, there's no way I'm doing this. I. Even before we've, like, agreed on it, I put the car in or the van in park, and I get out of the driver's seat, and she has to then climb over the middle console into the driver's seat, and I get into the passenger seat so that she can correct the steering wheel. And she's like, showing me it's not that difficult. Just turn the steering wheel back this way. So listen, what I'm saying is I have empathy for this, Waymo. I've been in this situation. It's very confusing. It's frightening when you've got a bunch of hungry people behind you and in front of you. When you've got people in the vehicle. Well, in this case, I guess there weren't any people in the vehicle watching. But yeah, low performance anxiety is to be understood.
- [10:22]
Amanda Silberling
Yeah. You know, AIs, they're just like us. This isn't tech related, but real quick, I did also, strangely, have a Wendy's involved driving learning situation.
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Micah Sargent
Wow. Tell me.
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Amanda Silberling
My dad was similarly like, showing me how to drive when I had my permit and would, like sit in the car with me. And around the same time through work or something. He ended up with this Coupon book of $1 Wendy's Frosties.
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Micah Sargent
Yes. The one.
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Amanda Silberling
Yes. Yeah. So I was allowed to get a Frosty if I parked well. And to this day, if I'm ever at home and we see someone who parked badly, my dad's like, they don't get a Frosty.
- [11:03]
Micah Sargent
That's amazing. I love that. So I think again, we're going to continue to see this. We're going to see more driverless vehicles. I don't think that's slowing down at all. And we'll have more funny stories like this that hit the, hit the waves for sure. All right, I do believe it is time for us to take a little break here before we come back with my story of the week. I am pretty excited about this sponsor, a new sponsor here on the show. I was able to talk to these folks just a couple of days ago or a few days ago. This is Spaceship, who is bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. I've got a question for you to kick things off. Why, why in the world do we assume that simple and affordable means basic and only for beginners? You know, tech professionals also want to save time and money. And so you can do that while saving time, saving money, and still get something that's a whole lot more than basic. That is the idea behind Spaceship, the pioneering domain and web platform that takes the pain out of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products like shared hosting, virtual machines, and business email. We talked to the folks, as I mentioned at Spaceship, and while we were having a conversation, I was getting more and more excited about what Spaceship offers. So I went to the website and I was able to, while we were on the call, get a domain and set up a WordPress instance on that domain during the conversation in like 10 minutes. It was amazing. And then from there, so much power that you have alongside below market prices for domain registration and renewals, Spaceship has some pretty fresh ways to deliver simplicity. You've got the unbox experience, as they call it, as you kind of, if you can imagine getting a package and opening it up and pulling everything out, that's for connecting your Spaceship products to your domain and configuring it all in just a few steps. That was the process I went to for setting up that WordPress instance. You have. Alf. Alf is your very own AI assistant for making life easy. From domain transfers to updating DNS records. ALF loves the stuff you probably don't. And this isn't just a quick little, oh, here is a problem I'm having. And ALF says try going to this help article. No, ALF is very, very well trained to help you fig out the exact issue that you're having. And that's why it's the stuff that you love. It loves the stuff that you probably don't. It's that very complicated stuff that ALF can help you out with. And then also the roadmap. I love this. You can help shape the future of the product and understand what's going on. For exploring, suggesting and voting on new features and products so customers and the tech community get what they really need. Visit spaceship.com TWIT to discover exclusive deals on domains and more. That's spaceship.com TWIT and we thank Spaceship for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break and I wanted to talk about a bit of web nostalgia because not too terribly long ago, I think it was back in March. Yes. So about just a little bit over a month ago, Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian announced that they were acquiring Digg. Digg, of course, is one of the first kind of online news aggregators that took off and gave people the, it was all a Reddit in the sense of kind of knowing what was going on on the web. Well, with these two acquiring the product, there has been ongoing work to bring it back. And as of this morning, as we record the show on Thursday, April 10, Dig kicked off what's called its early access community. So this is kind of a little community gathering spot where people are getting to see early looks at what the product is going to look, what the product will be getting, some, you know, getting to provide some feedback on the design, that kind of thing. It's $5 to join and the group says this isn't about like trying to make an amount of money, it's about keeping the bots out. So more than a dollar to make it expensive for a bot system. But in fact all of those proceeds are going to go to a non profit that the community will kind of join together to, to, to decide. And anyway, when you do this, you get your, if you, if you sign up for this, you get your username for Diggs with whatever username you sign up with and you also get a special badge being one of the groundbreakers. But I'm not really talking about this specifically Dig itself, but instead I thought it'd be an opportunity for us to kind of take a look back at our early web experiences. Because Digg was there kind of at the, I think at the point where the web I can remember being a lot of fun. And so I wanted to talk to you and ask you, kind of looking back, what do you remember? Were some of the apps or services that you used that hold a special place in your heart or just were, you know, it's fun to reminisce on from time to time.
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Amanda Silberling
Unfortunately, I think the first social Internet experience I had was the Club Penguin forums on miniclip.com, unfortunately, Disney bought Club Penguin and shut it down. And that is when, as a child I was radicalized against big corporations. I never really used Dig like it existed when I was old enough to be on the Internet. But I feel like I remember it being kind of already like the hype had worn down. I'm in my late 20s for context. I feel like there were a lot of these kinds of like link aggregator things that linked into Tumblr. But it was kind of clunky if it was like shared via stumbledupon or Dig or like We Heart it or like those sorts of websites, which I don't know. I mean, I guess in a way I do like the idea of a return to these sort of more human based platforms of like your friend being like, hey, look at this cool video I saw. Instead of the tick tock algorithm being like, guess what, you just woke up and we're about to tell you that the Phillies are having a hello Kitty giveaway, which I did learn this morning when I woke up.
- [18:18]
Micah Sargent
I mean, that's kind of cool too.
- [18:20]
Amanda Silberling
Honestly, I kind of want, I want to go, but this, you know, I wasn't looking for that. But I, I did get advertised to without even being advertised to. And I might go to that Phillies game to get the hello Kitty giveaway.
- [18:32]
Micah Sargent
So for me, there were a couple of early sites. Certainly Tumblr was a big, big site at the time. But I can remember stumbleupon, what you mentioned, being one of my favorite things to do for the day. I would open up my browser, I would just click that Stumble upon button over and over again and find a bunch of cool stuff. And I just had bookmark after bookmark after bookmark of these different websites that had cool stuff online. And I would add things to Stumble upon. Dig was, I remember kind of connecting to Dig and trying to use Dig. But as was your experience, it had started to go that way of not being in the hype cycle anymore. And so I was almost kind of. It was a sort of FOMO play of, wait, let me see if I can, you know, be part of this before it's gone. But there was also a site at the time that was big for me called Daily Booth, and that one still sticks out to me because it was an early social media site that truly connected you to the world because there was a photo stream that everyone who visited the site could see. And so as people posted photos wherever they were in the world, it would pop up on this photo stream. And so you would take a daily photo. You didn't have to, but that was the idea. Daily Booth and post it. There's. And then people could comment on it. Excuse me. And the people could comment on it. People could like your photo. And it was at the time a very gratifying experience, right, because you ended up talking to people all over. And I made some friends through that site. Actually. It was kind of upsetting when it went away. It went away a long time after I stopped using it. But I think about that and how much a site like that would not work in the modern web where, yes, we have, you know, anybody can technically find my Instagram, right, and see the latest photo that I post. But it's not the same as this, like one stream that everybody gets to go to and you're just seeing boop, boop, boop photos just loading over and over again of people all around the world. And it felt, felt at the time also very positive. I never experienced any bullying on the site or anything like that. And there was some level of wholesomeness to it. I'm sure there were lots of bad things that happened on the side. It just lucked out and not being part of that. But I found that a very kind of enamoring. Right. Experience of the early web that I wonder if it is lost in today's modern web. And I don't know, it's hard to sort of pinpoint what precisely that is. Do we all have too much power now versus before, where it was kind of like there was. There wasn't enough of a backbone to the web, where you could just have so much instant access to everything and ability to upload, you know, dozens of things at one. I don't know. I don't know what it was. But there's something about that early web that felt more mystical and magical maybe. And now the mystery is gone. It's just a thing we all have, and maybe that plays a role in it. Where at one point there, the Magic has, has, has gone away to a certain extent as it has become just this tool that we all have and use. Do you, do you find yourself yearning for, you know, the days of aol, Instant Messeng, how that felt? I mean like Neopets, Club Penguin. I was also a club Penguin. Er, I played Runescape, my siblings and I played Maple Story. And there, that was just a delightful time. And I wonder, I mean, maybe that's still happening in the Mindscape and Roblox communities. Maybe they still feel that there's. I don't know.
- [23:00]
Amanda Silberling
Yeah, I think that it might be that there's just so many people now that it feels like in. I would guess I was not on the Internet at the time, but like in the 90s, it was almost like the people that were on the Internet were already a self selecting group of people that were like, I know how to log into my server and like run, dial up and whatever. And then now it's like your grandma's on Facebook. But also I think it's just that there are fewer places to go now. It feels like where, if you're talking about like making a friend on the Internet, it's probably happening on like X or Blue sky or like YouTube, Instagram, whatever. Like, and it's all like, they're all controlled by a very small number of companies and, and then again it's like, oh boy, like dig. But it's like, no, I mean this is coming from like the people that have built the Internet as we know it in a sense. Like Alexis Ohanian created Reddit.
- [24:04]
Micah Sargent
Right.
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Amanda Silberling
Which I don't know. I mean even Reddit is still sort of a bit strange compared to the rest of social media where like a friend once told me that they would rather someone find out their Social Security number than their Reddit username because Reddit feels so like personal and private and like you're going on there and you're like, hello, I'm having this weird health issue, someone please help me. And then you're like, hello, I'm gonna write my like 5 page fan theory about severance.
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Micah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, you do kind of. You, you bury yourself. Well, some people do anyway. I, I'm, I'm rarely on Reddit, so. But I get that, that idea of sort of burying yourself.
- [24:57]
Amanda Silberling
I had a, a dark time in 2019, so pre pandemic. I'm very proud of this. But I had my Kombucha making phase before the pandemic and got a lot of information on R. Kombucha. Had some pretty Good posts on our slash. Kombucha. Ultimately found back that having a like, weird bacteria tea thing in your home is more trouble than it's worth.
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Micah Sargent
I. You know, it's almost as if the sentence explains itself, but.
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Amanda Silberling
Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, give like fizz ratings.
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Micah Sargent
Oh, my God. And people have weird bacteria bread things in their house too, so. Oh, yeah, you know, it is what it is. Fizz ratings. Okay, let me tell you something. The other day I had some kombucha on tap at a Portland gluten free Japanese bakery.
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Amanda Silberling
Incredible.
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Micah Sargent
Thank you. Unfortunately, what wasn't incredible was the fizz rating on the kombucha that I had. I would. I don't know what the scale is.1 to 10 fizzies. I would give it a 2 on the fizzy scale.
- [26:08]
Amanda Silberling
Oh, no, that's so sad.
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Micah Sargent
Very sad. I was very sad because I love a ginger booch and I'll have it of any kind of brand. Slap down a ginger boot and I will drink it. Probably specifically non alcoholic versions. And yeah, so I was like, oh, this is gonna be so refreshing. This is. And I drank it and I was like, this is nearly flat. That's so sad. I wanted. I wanted to burn my throat and it didn't.
- [26:36]
Amanda Silberling
That is very sad because you're supposed to put it for like the final step. You put it in those little like flip top bottles where it carbonates it because it's so like intensely kept in there. And then when you open it, you have to like, burp it before so that it doesn't explode everywhere.
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Micah Sargent
Burp it.
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Amanda Silberling
So, yeah, you have to burp your.
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Micah Sargent
Kombucha and, you know, burp your booch, baby.
- [26:57]
Amanda Silberling
Maybe the Internet was a mistake. I learned to burp my kombucha on the Internet.
- [27:03]
Micah Sargent
Oh, dear. Amanda Silberling, it is always a pleasure to chat with you about Internet culture and everything in between on the show. Of course, folks can head over TechCrunch.com to check out the work you're doing, but where else should they go to keep up with what you've got out.
- [27:18]
Amanda Silberling
There, social media wise? I'm mostly on Blue sky these days. I am Manda omg. Lol. Which is just a URL. I happen to own and now have a use for. And I have an Internet culture podcast called wow if True. And I think that it is good, but I'm biased because I make it.
- [27:39]
Micah Sargent
Well, I am not biased and it is good. So everyone go listen to it. Thank you, Amanda. And we will See you again for our next observance of the second Thursday of the month.
- [27:50]
Amanda Silberling
Yep, we could bring our kombucha and cheers over the camera.
- [27:53]
Micah Sargent
There we go. Only after we've burped it.
- [27:56]
Amanda Silberling
Yes. All right. Goodbye.
- [27:57]
Micah Sargent
Bye bye. All righty. Let's take a quick break so I can tell you about Zscaler, who is bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Zscaler is the leader in cloud security. Hackers are using AI to breach your organization. You know it. AI powers innovation and drives efficiency, but it does also help bad actors deliver more relentless and effective attacks. Phishing attacks over encrypted channels increased by 34.1% fueled by the growing use of generative AI tools and phishing as a service kits. I've seen it myself the way that they use generative AI to make this phishing even more clever. Organizations in all industries from small to large are leveraging AI to increase employee productivity with public AI for engineers with coding assistants, marketers with writing tools and finance creating spreadsheet formulas automate workflows for operational efficiency across individuals and teams. 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Thrive in the AI era with Zscaler 0 Trust plus AI to stay ahead of the competition and remain resilient even as threats and risks evolve. You can learn more@zscaler.com security that's zscaler.com security and we thank Zscaler for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break and that means it is time for another story of the week. This is huge. A fantastic piece over at the information that I encourage everyone to go check out because it gives a little bit more Insight into the goings on at Apple in the wake of the the AI debacle. Okay, so we know that Apple originally announced that it was going to be bringing some very powerful AI tools to market and in fact had some pretty interesting marketing involving AI, including Bella Ramsey in advertisements and sort of hyping up this ability for Siri to be able to be proactive and have access to even more information about you, to be able to go in and know what your calendar looks like, know what apps you're using, know what's on your screen and provide feedback and answers based on what you say and what you're doing. Well, as much as that was hyped and, and marketed and tied into Apple plus Intelligence, what we saw from Apple was a certain amount of the Apple Intelligence features coming to market, like the writing tools that help you to summarize an article or give you the ability to rewrite something, or the image tools like Image Playground that helps you create honestly lackluster images of different varieties. Or, or the arguably really cool and fun emoji creation tool which lets you. It's a language. Well, it's not a large language model, but it's a generative AI model trained specifically on emoji so that you can create your own emoji and seems to be a hit thus far. Outside of that though, it has not been what Apple said was going to be the case and that has led to a huge shift at the Apple company, the Cupertino company. So I want to talk a little bit about. Of course everyone needs to go read this piece from Wayne Ma. So I'm not going to summarize the whole thing, but I want to talk a little bit about it because I think it's going to give us some insight into where things are going as we go forward and as more news breaks and as WWDC hits, which is right around the corner corner. According to the information and according to other reporting from other organizations like Bloomberg, the messy mix up at the company has a lot to do with how the company felt it could solve this AI. Not a problem. I mean it's, it's felt it could bring this AI solution to market. There was one group within the Siri AI organization that felt that the way to do it was to create a small language model and a large language model and they actually called them according to the piece Minnie Mouse and Mighty Mouse and that Minnie Mouse, the small language model would exist on your phone and not require any access to any server or anything like that. That it would be able to do a lot of the processing right there on device. It would handle those simple tasks. It would be a bit like the way that you already have the ability to have Siri create an alarm for you. But instead of doing it the old way of using Siri, it would require this new small language model. Then Mighty Mouse, the large language model would of course be in the server. That'd be for the more complex tasks. That'd be for the stuff like looking at your calendar and then suggesting, hey, do you need an Uber? And ordering that Uber for you for that meeting that you need to get to. Well, unfortunately, that is not what some of the people working on this tool thought was the right way to do it. The other leaders decided that it should go somewhere else. The company should solve it another way that they should build one large language model that would do everything. But the problem with that is a large language model does not fit on an iPhone while still saving space for you to do the rest of the stuff that you want to do on your iPhone. So it need, and it also requires a whole heck of a lot of processing and therefore needs to be in the cloud. It needs to be on a server. Well, that runs contrary to the company's focus and desire to be the personal data privacy company. And when that's the case, you are left with the question of how in the world are you going to pull it off when you have that, that, that situation of a company that up to this point has said, look, user privacy is paramount. It is at the forefront. Of course, we saw Apple try to solve this problem by coming to market with the AI privacy method of having kind of these private cloud computing servers. And there have been some solutions there, but it all needed to line up at the same time with what they were trying to do for Siri's new way of existing, this more powerful Siri that has more knowledge about you and can act on what you're doing, doing. So in attempting to bring this to market in small ways leading up to what would eventually be the Bella Ramsey Siri, we've seen already some fumbles because things that Siri used to be able to do, Siri sometimes is not able to do. Where it used to be easy to ask Siri for, you know, something regarding a historical context. Now it may provide an answer, or it may say, you want to ask ChatGPT, because I don't really have that knowledge. And it was something that up to that point it could answer. I've seen people who've asked it to Set a timer. And instead of setting a timer, it decides to do something else, like do a search for timers. It's very frustrating and people are perplexed about it. We saw a lot of blowback from many a tech publication specifically focused on Apple, including Daring Fireball itself. And with that came kind of questions about what was going on internally. Well, then we heard that people within the company got together and had these, what my high school European history teacher would call, call Come to Jesus moments where you are sat down and we're having a serious conversation and we're going to get things worked out with, you know, some, some harsh words involved and some, some very frightening outcomes. And that led to a shift in the company because instead of Siri and this new version of Siri being under John Gianandrea, the AI chief and that and Gene Andrea's team, it got shifted over to Hair Force One himself, Craig Federighi, along with Mike Rockwell, who worked on Vision Pro. So all of that would be the new way of working with Siri in its new AI version. And there's been kind of ongoing tumult and questions about what exactly we're going to get when it comes to Siri going forward and what the company is even going to be able to announce in the next year. And I think more importantly, how it is going to respond to the fact that up to this point it has announced this technology and hasn't made it possible, has not made it available to us. You know, there it all boils down to these kind of internal power struggles at the company and which group was going to kind of take charge. Because for the longest time, Siri kind of was a background technology after its announcement, when it first kicked off, then you had Siri just being what it was for so long. So then the AI group comes forth, which by the way, according to the information, got renamed Aimless as opposed to the AI group, became the Aimless group, and that it did not do a good job of bringing to fruition the stuff that was promised. So. So right now there's so much kind of disagreement about what would make a good and more powerful Siri, with the AI team feeling like chatbots are not of use, that there's a disagreement about small and large language models and if there would be an internal LLM powering these features versus an external LLM powering these features, along with, according to the report, the software team, the team under Craig Federighi creating its own LLM set of features that in some cases did better than what the AI group itself had created. So now we have to figure out going forward what this is going to look like. And that's the big question. I am very much looking forward to June, when we get to see what Apple has created for us for the operating systems for the rest of the year and into next year. And what, what kind of messaging is put out there about the current state of Siri and Siri AI and Apple intelligence as a whole. So again, we'll link it in the show notes. Go check out that information article how Apple fumbled series AI makeover to get the full scoop and skinny on what's going on there. All right, we are going to take another break before we come back with our final portion of the show. An interview with a familiar face. Very excited about this as we talk about some technology that I would love to have in my home. But let me tell you about zocdoc, who's bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Excuses, excuses. When was the last time you needed to go to the doctor but you just pushed it off? You made the excuse, I'm too busy, it'll heal on its own. I don't know what doctor to go to to. This literally sounds like me preaching to people in my life. I'm like, you just need to go to the doctor. And they don't want to go. And they say these things, I'm too busy, I'll do. It'll come out in the wash, it's fine. No, you know, many of us have been there. Maybe I don't know that I've been there. I'm always, I go to the doctor when I need to. But if you've been there, if you've made that excuse, you know, we've been there before. Booking a doctor appointment can truly feel, feel very daunting thanks to zocdoc. There's no reason to delay because zocdoc makes it easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you. When I first moved to Portland from California, my insurance had to change and that meant I needed to find a doctor that was covered by my insurance. And things are a little bit different here in Portland, Oregon than they were in Northern California, where I was where it was very simple to be part of a sort of group medical group and everything was taken care of by this one group. Now that I'm here in Portland, Oregon, where there are many options available and many different sort of companies and organizations that support my insurance and others that don't. ZOCDOC came through It's a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. ZocDoc saved my bacon because I didn't have to go to the I'm too busy. It'll heal on its own. I don't know which doctor to go to excuses because I knew about ZocDoc thanks to them sponsoring being a sponsor on the network and I was able to head there first and figure it out. And not only did I find what I was looking for for my doctor is right down the street from me. Like literally the other day I had an appointment. I walked there in 10 minutes. And that's because I was able to find them on ZocDoc and didn't have that anxiety of if I hand them my insurance card, are they going to say actually no, you have blah blah blah blah blah A and we only support blah blah blah blah blah C plus D. Right? No, I'd have to worry about that. It was all good. Loved that. So we're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health to dental health. Did I mention that my dentist is also right down the street from me, like 12 minutes away. Primary care to urgent care and more. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance or located nearby, as I just mentioned, are a good fit for any medical needs you may have and are highly rated by verified patients. Like these are real patients. This isn't that, you know, AI bot system that's leaving reviews. These are real, real patients. Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual appointment openings. Choose a time slot that works for you and click to instantly book a visit. That's something else else I should mention. I started with location because I thought that was the most important thing. But then I'm looking at the reviews for my doctor, hearing wonderful things I get there. This guy's so nice, so nice. And it was all like everything that I saw there was true, it beared out to be true. Appointments made through Zocdoc also happen fast by the way. Typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking you can even score same day appointments. Stop putting off those doctor appointments and go to Zocdoc.com TNW to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's z o c d o c.com TNW Zocdoc.com TNW thank you Zocdoc for sponsoring this week's episode of 10 Tech News Weekly. All right. We are back from the break, and though I am sad to say that she won't be joining us next week, I am excited to say that joining us today for our interview is Jennifer Patterson Tuohy of the Verge. Welcome, Jen.
- [46:07]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Hi. Happy to be here. Sorry not to be here next week, but I'm making up for it today.
- [46:12]
Micah Sargent
Yes, and indeed. And I know that you have very important things to take care of, so we completely understand. So I am pretty excited because oftentimes when something that feels a little bit, I don't know, wonky and fun is, is debuted, announced, teased at CES or one of those other big trade shows, it means that it's not ever going to be a reality. But you are here to tell us that Samsung has a product it's actually bringing to market. What is it and what, what do we need to know?
- [46:55]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Well, they say it's coming this summer and it is exciting. I'm excited because I love robots. And this is Samsung's. Okay, Samsung songs. Bali or barley robot? I say Bali, but you know, and when they say it on stage, you know, there's lots of different accents, so I'm not sure we really know the pronunciation. But Bally Robot, which was first demoed at CES in 2020 and it was one of the first sort of home robots we saw. So this was before Amazon's Astro, but they're but Samsung. So they debuted it in 2020. Nothing for ages. We didn't hear anything about it. And then at CES in 2024 it was back and had a new design with some wheels and more features and a projector. And now it was shown at 2025 CES and they said then it's coming this year. And we all said, oh yes, it is. Really?
- [47:54]
Micah Sargent
Oh yes it is.
- [47:55]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
But now, according to a post on the Samsung Newsroom, they are going to ship this summer, which is still not an actual ship date, but you know, it's, it's a, a window. So all the way through the end of August we might expect to see it. No pricing yet, and I'm guessing not cheap, is going to be somewhere around, around the price point. Um, so, and this is. So it's a home robot and it can roll around, it can answer questions. It's kind of like a smart speaker on wheels, to be fair. But the big news today or this week is that they are actually adding Gemini multimodal capabilities to it, which supposedly will make it smarter and easier to interact with, as well as Samsung's own large language models. It's interesting that they are doing this partnership with Google here. And, um. But it is. It's a fun little guy. I've always been excited about this idea of a little ball rolling around my house. Um, it doesn't hit. One key feature for me of robots, though, is actually being obviously useful.
- [49:06]
Micah Sargent
Ah, yeah. It's not also a vacuum, for example.
- [49:10]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
A vacuum? No. It doesn't have arms. It can't carry things around for you. The way Samsung is positioning it is basically as a digital assistant that's physically in your home. It can. It has a projector, has a speaker and a microphone. And so if you ask it a question, it. Instead of having, say, a smart display with a screen, it can just project on a nearby wall or on the floor and talk and show you what you. Your what question. Answers to your questions. In this little demo video, video that they put up yesterday, it showed a cartoon character lady asking, saying, I want a new hairstyle. And it presented five or six different options of new hairstyles. Apparently some of its other capabilities, and these are enhanced by the multimodal element of Gemini is being able to help you choose what to wear. Like, it can judge your sartorial style and tell you whether you should perhaps change your.
- [50:05]
Micah Sargent
Amazon tried that before and it did not work out for Amazon.
- [50:10]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And then they were also. We saw it demoed at CES this year and they were showing that being able to. To you could hold up two bottles of wine and it would choose. It would say, oh, this bottle will go better with the fish dinner that you're preparing.
- [50:23]
Micah Sargent
Oh, your little sommelier.
- [50:24]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, there it is. A little sommelier. Yes. And that was before they meant they launched Gemini, but they gave us very few details at ces. So it's possible that that was the feature that they were preparing to bring to the robot. But it. Yeah, it. I just. It's fun, it's cute. And that's what all these little robots have been like. But they all have failed to date because they just don't have a very clear purpose or a real reason to have them in your home. Yeah, the biggest one here, that from my perspective, and this is why I say it's like a smart display, is it does connect to your smart home through SmartThings, which is Samsung Smart smart home platform. So you can tell it to, you know, open the shades or turn on the lights. And it's. It seems from some of their demos to have some sort of autonomy.
- [51:10]
Amanda Silberling
So.
- [51:10]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
So I remember that originally when they demoed it, they showed the Dog knocking over a bowl of food while no one was in the home. And it saw that and it sent the Samsung robot vacuum to clean up the mess and then played some like soothing tunes to calm the dog down, you know, so it was sort of proactive.
- [51:29]
Micah Sargent
Oh, that's kind of sweet.
- [51:30]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah. So I mean, we will see.
- [51:32]
Micah Sargent
You know what? A little friend from my dogs while I'm away is actually not a bad idea. And then it could play little, like if you had a cat, it could use that projector to put a little dot all over the house.
- [51:45]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And it could be interactive because the other thing they showed was that projecting buttons on the floor and you know, you can select a button and press.
- [51:52]
Micah Sargent
Buttons with your foot. Yeah, okay, that's kind of cool.
- [51:57]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Lots of cool ideas. Just again, what's the killer use case here?
- [52:02]
Micah Sargent
Right.
- [52:02]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Don't know that there is one.
- [52:04]
Micah Sargent
But I also. Why do they all assume we have ranch style homes?
- [52:09]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I know I have stairs everywhere. Not sure how.
- [52:12]
Micah Sargent
It's just.
- [52:13]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Anyway, I'm going to have to carry.
- [52:14]
Micah Sargent
My volley, I guess. Like, and that's the thing too is it's like they've taken, they've, they've taken a robot and given it the personality of a Chihuahua in some ways because it's going to follow you around. Well, I've got, you know, different smart speakers in my home in places such that I can always just use my voice if I wanted to to make things happen. Is maybe part of the idea here that as you move throughout the home, if you don't have multiple smart speakers, then this will be right there to help you. Then I'm also worried like, what is Samsung's sort of liability if you get tripped up over this thing, you know what I mean? If it's like falling right behind you and you don't see it and then you trip over it, that's not something we've had to deal with up to this point. I guess if you tripped over your own smart vacuum, that's not the company.
- [53:12]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And I do that a lot.
- [53:15]
Micah Sargent
Well, you probably got 15 running around in there at any given time.
- [53:18]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
So yeah, I think. And that is sort of the pitch is that it follows you around. And like the other thing they showed in their video was a man getting ready for work and, and Barley reminding him that he's late and that, you know, he should get, get going. The traffic's getting worse, he needs to go sooner. So it's sort of, you know, a constant. I guess the idea is a constant companion. It's Moving with you, it's always reminding you of what you need might get really annoying. But it also, I mean I know what you, what you're saying about already voice control is already useful without needing something that's following you around. And that was the issue I found with the Amazon Astro robot. It was like it couldn't really do much more than a smart display could. And it, it, it kind of took up a lot of space. But I think the proactive element when you're not home is interesting. And that was what Amazon was trying to push with Astro as like a home security robot. But it being able to take care of things for you when you're not there because it can see everywhere around your house and it can go and check on things for you. Like you could maybe phone in and say did I leave the back door open? Boy, check for you. Sort of like that's what Amazon's flying indoor drone camera was, was all about too. Like it could, it could keep an eye on things for you when you're not home. And robot vacuums right now can already do this. Many of them have video cameras in them and voice assistants and they will even, some of them have, even have features where you can say go check on my pet. And it will just roam around and look for your dog. So you know, there's already these, some of these capabilities out there. But robot vacuums can also vacuum your floor. So they have, you know, more use absolutely than this. Do you want to get this, Would you get one in your, would you have a bally in your home?
- [55:04]
Micah Sargent
I would love to answer that question. We do need to take one tiny little break. We'll come back, we'll answer that question and then I have a question for you. Sort of a pie in the sky kind of, kind of deal. So let me tell you about Cash Fly real quick. We're bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. We love Cash Fly. For more than 20 years CashFly has held a track record for high performing ultra reliable content delivery serving more than 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. And at TWIT, as I said, we've been using Cashfly for more than a decade now. We love the lag free video loading, the hyper fast downloads, the friction free site interactions and boy, Cashfly's proof is in the petabytes events stream smoothly to millions of concurrent users worldwide. Online games start 70% faster. They scale instantly. They play without lag. Software downloads flawlessly during releases, patches and updates. HD video plays on demand with ultra fast sub second start on every device and podcasts reach global audiences in record speed at any scale. Cachefly delivers rich media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in its cloud, ensuring a 100% cash hit ratio. And with Cash Fly's elite managed packages, you will get the VIP treatment. CashFly is like gaining an extension of your team. When your entire business model depends on delivering massive amounts of content, you can't afford to go it alone. You can count on personalized help anytime from a tenured expert who gets IT Engineer to Engineer 24. 7. Learn how you can get your first month free@cashfly.com TWIT that's C-A C-H-E-F-L-Y.com TWIT and we thank Cashfly for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break. Jennifer Pattison Twohey of the Verge is here and we are talking about Samsung's Bali. Jen asked me if I would have a Bali in my home and I gotta tell you, before I talked to you, I was very bombastic about Bali. But you have brought a good point up which is that it in itself isn't all that useful and that kind of breaks my heart a little bit. I think that you're right. Like I would want this to do a little bit more on its own such that it would deserve probably the high price that it's going to cost and it's, you know, charging dock or whatever space inside of my home. And I don't know know if in its current form it does that, especially because I don't live in a ranch style home. Like maybe if it could follow me to all floors and was literally became like my little buddy. That's kind of cool because I could talk to it and be like, hey, can you add this to my, my calendar or hey, I'm, I don't want to forget this. So can you do that? Or even, you know, if you're having a conversation with somebody and it reminds you, you know, you promised that you were going to do this. Did you remember that? No, you're right. Bali. I forgot. Thank, thank you so much. But yeah, it can't follow me everywhere. So I don't know.
- [58:14]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah. And that those features are things that we've been promised, things like Alexa plus and other and we already have some capabilities there without needing a robot in the home for it there. And I, I mean I just don't feel like the Use cases they've shared so far really set bally. I do think cute robot is hard to get. You know, it's hard to say no to though, right. So I just would like to see. I mean, who needs, I don't need a robot to tell me which bottle of wine to choose or what clothes to put on.
- [58:50]
Micah Sargent
Right? In fact, I don't want a robot to tell me what clothes to put on. That's kind of, I'd be a little bit like, okay, now you're leaving my house. Thank you.
- [58:58]
E
Right.
- [58:58]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
If that's all they could really come up with as a selling point, I was a little disappointed.
- [59:04]
Micah Sargent
And that's why I want to ask you is if you could tell me what you are the creator now of the Bali that gets the JPT seal of approval. By the way, one of our listeners hopefully can make us see we have great artists in our club. So maybe someone will make the JPT seal of approval. But I would love to know if you could have right now a robot in your home that is more than just a vacuum. It can be a vacuum too, but more than just a vacuum. And it's still reasonably possible to have this. What does the JPT approved home robot look like and what functions does it have?
- [59:50]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Well, so I've, I've said on this show numerous times that I, I'm not a huge fan of the idea of a humanoid robot in the house. I do think that single person purpose robots are probably more useful and more affordable. But in like an ideal world where we are able to create something that's like a companion like robot that also is effective in the home. I don't think we need a robot that is also, that is also going to sort of necessarily be your vacuum cleaner or do other meaningful tasks that other robots already do. That robot could sort of be like an orchestrator. Like I said earlier, the BALI when they first demoed it, Samsung showed it telling the robot vacuum, go and vacuum. So I kind of like that idea of it being like able to look after my home using artificial intelligence being kind of like the brain of my home. So that my robot doesn't have to necessarily be super smart. I mean my vacuum doesn't have to be super smart, but the ball e can orchestrate everything. But what it really needs is an arm. It needs to be able. That's what make, that's what takes it from being a smart display to being actually a useful element to actually to add into your home. Because adding a rolling robot into your home can cause some Chaos. And I think if it had some kind of way of manipulating actual devices in your home, like I think, you know, press buttons for you, pick things up, you know, tidy up. So it is, I guess it is a Rosie the Robot. Robot is what I would want ultimately, but I don't want a full on humanoid Android walking around my home. That just, that feels too sci fi and also just too. We don't need that. I think we have other elements in our house that in the smart home that, you know, we have motorized shades, we have the robot vacuum. But having. If it had an arm, maybe two, because one would look really creepy. If I had two little appendages, I think that, yeah, two little chicken arms. And you know, also to your point, it probably needs a way to get up and down stairs if it's going to be useful in like 50% of people's homes. Yeah. It's just, I think the key here that what is interesting is that it does have the generative AI powers, which is not something we've seen in a home robot before. It is what we're beginning to see coming to smart speakers and smart as smart assistants. But that is going to be interesting to see how smart it can be and how easy it can be to interact with it too. Because if I can say Bali, go into the living room and shove the robot because it got stuck on the chair leg, actually use natural conversation and have it do what I need, that could be useful. But right now it just doesn't feel, feel. It feels very gimmicky. Still cute, but gimmicky. And I. When it first came out, it didn't have wheels. And everyone, what. How is it rolling? And it was so cool that it just rolled around. It's kind of like a marble, you know.
- [63:02]
Micah Sargent
Oh, okay. So it didn't have wheels, but it still moved. I thought you were saying it didn't have wheels and it didn't move.
- [63:06]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
The original one they demoed, so sorry it didn't come out, but they demoed at CES 2020 just rolled. It was much more BB8. Now they've added two front wheels and a little rear wheel thing. And it just is not as cute.
- [63:21]
Micah Sargent
It's not bally anymore. It's like cylindering.
- [63:25]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yes. It's like, if you're gonna add appendages, stick an arm in there too.
- [63:30]
Micah Sargent
There you go. There, that is, that's. That is the way for sure. Jennifer, it is always a pleasure to have you on the show. We will miss you next week, but thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Of course folks, head over to TheVerge.com to check out the work that you're doing. You're a very prolific writer. There's always stuff to to check out there. Where else can people go if they want to keep up to date with what you've got?
- [63:54]
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
So I'm on Blue sky and I'm on Threads. Threads is at Smart Home Mama and Blue Sky. I'm JP Tui and also on X. But yeah, those are my kind of main social media channels. And then yeah, the veg.com and here every month.
- [64:13]
Micah Sargent
Yes, every Thursday. Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you again soon. Bye bye bye. All righty folks, we have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. The show publishes every Thursday at TWiT TV TNW. That is where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. If you would like to get all of our shows ad free, just the content, none of the ads. Can I invite you to join the club? I'm very excited to say that we have our annual plan plan back. So now you can join our monthly plan or our annual plan. And of course we like to kick things off with a two week free trial of Club Twit at TWiT TV Club Twit. So head there, join the fun. You'll get access to not just free content but also access to the members only Discord Server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. And access to the Twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show. Plus special Club Twit events get published there. It is a really good time. Plus that huge. Like I said, that back catalog of content is just really nice to get with the Twit plus bonus feed. If you would like to follow me online, I'm ikasargent on many a social media network. Or you can head to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C H I H U A H u a Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Be sure to check out Hands on Mac and iOS today later today and also check out on Sundays Hands On Tech. We just published rather recorded the next round of episodes so you'll see those hitting your feeds. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you to John, Ashley and Burke for their work on this show and thank you to those of you who tune in every week. We do appreciate it. I've heard that there's been even more of you some growth for Tech News Weekly, so we'd love to hear that. Keep telling your friends, keep telling your family. And if I could ask if you haven't done it or if you have and it's been a while, head into Apple Podcasts and make sure you've got that five star rating on the show. That really does help. You don't even need to leave a review, just the five star rating is enough and it means a lot. It actually does impact advertising and so it is wonderful whenever we can show them how well the show is rated. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you again. Bye Bye.
- [66:43]
Unknown
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- [68:07]
E
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