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Tech News Weekly 438: Gemini in Your Glasses: A First Look
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Google's Android XR Smart Glasses
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Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jennifer Pattison Tui of the Verge is here. We talk about Amazon's virtual assistant showing up on Amazon.com then I talk about a kerfuffle and a row in the 3D printing community before Julian Chikatu stops by to give us a bit of an understanding of Google's upcoming Android XR Smart classes as he went hands on with them. Then Apple's accessibility updates coming in the next versions of its various platforms. All of that up next on Tech News Weekly. This episode is brought to you by Outsystems, a leading agentix systems platform built for the enterprise. Organizations all over the world are building, orchestrating and governing Agentix systems on the Outsystems platform and with good reason. Architect deliver and scale governed Agentix systems with agility and trust using one open and unified platform PowerSecure company wide agentic orchestration for core business operations. Teams of any size and technical depth can use Outsystems to build, deploy and manage AI apps and agents quickly and cost effectively without compromising reliability and security. With Outsystems you can rapidly launch ideas from concept to completion. It's the leading agentix systems platform that is unified, agile and enterprise proven, allowing you to accelerate growth, reduce operational friction and deliver real enterprise impact with AI out systems. Build your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com TWIT that's outsystems.com TWIT
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podcasts you love from people you trust.
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This is Twit. This is Tech News Weekly episode 438 with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and me, Micah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, May 21, 12th, 2026 Gemini in your glasses. A first look. 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 always thrilled to be joined by the wonderful Jennifer Patterson Tuohy. Hello Jen.
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Hello Micah. Always happy to be here.
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Yes, it's always happy. It's always a pleasure to have you with us. Now let me go ahead and say to everyone out there if you currently have an Echo device that is listening for a certain keyword, just go in your little app and switch it to Echo or computer for a moment or perhaps maybe even just hit that little mute switch that's on the top or on the side or wherever it happens to be. Just have it plug its ears basically because we're going to be talking about, I think a very interesting story from Jen and their going to be lots of mentions of you know who, Amazon's virtual assistant. So prepare yourselves and then we don't have to have John going through and finding every single instance of Alexa throughout. All right.
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Yes. And we don't have to do all the weird linguistics.
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Exactly.
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Like you were just.
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Yes, like I was just doing.
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Yes.
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So now you're, you are free to move about the country. Tell us about your story.
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Yeah, so this was kind of interesting. Again, slightly outside of my normal realm, but I found it really fascinating to sort of dive into. So Alexa plus, which is Amazon's newish, been out for about a year now. LLM powered generative AI assistant is now moving in to Amazon.com and if you're familiar with Alexa, it's the reincarnation of the Amazon's digital voice assistant that exists in your Echo devices. Oh, you know what, I didn't mute mine. I'm a bad smart home reviewer. They're now going off. Hang on. Works in progress.
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That is so funny.
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And now it's telling me all about it anyway, so yes, so that it lives in your Echo devices. And also I have. So these are my Echo frames and you may use Alexa on your phone in other parts of your home. They were all sorts of devices that had Alexa in. And now Alexa is the smarter, more basically like a ChatGPT or a Gemini type of interaction voice assistant. Now it's in Amazon.com so when you go and shop on Amazon you, you can type in your regular query like I want, you know, toilet paper. And you'll still get your list of toilet paper but if you want something more specific, if you, something you may have gone to say chatgpt for like what's a good skin care routine for a man? Or when did I last order double A batteries? The intelligence of Alexa is Now integrated into Amazon.com and you will get a full answer. So you'll get, for example, you know, Amazon knows when you last bought batteries, but previously if you had put that in, it would have just given you a list of battery that you can buy. Now it will say, well, you last ordered them, you know, this month and they're on your subscribe and save. Would you like to manage your subscribe and save? Would you like to get, you know, it's basically just trying to make shopping on Amazon more intuitive by using the, the powers, the generative AI powers of Alexa Plus. And also if you remember, you may have used Rufus, which was Amazon's original AI shopping assistant. So it's basically taken the capabilities of the Amazon voice Assistant and the Rufus AI shopping assistant and put them together in what they're calling Alexa for Shopping. So it's not actually called Alexa plus in, in that system it's called Alexa for Shopping. And you can now. And what's, what's really interesting is Alexa for Shopping will exist across all your Amazon and Echo surfaces. So if you're talking to your Echo show about something you want to buy, you can then go and pick up that conversation on Amazon.com when you go to buy it. So it'll have that context. It will remember what you were looking for and what you wanted to do. The example that Amazon provided when they launched this service was say you're talking to your Alexa device at home, your Echo device, about your kids science project. You know, I have to build a volcano for sixth grade. What supplies do I need? And then you can go to Amazon.com and pull up that conversation and then find all the supplies you need on Amazon.com that kind of continuity I think could be relatively useful right now. You may do a few extra steps to, to bring that together. And then the other thing that's interesting, well, the capabilities of Rufus, if you use Rufus, it could sort of track prices for you and sort of had some agentic features like it could actually go buy things for you when that price hit a certain point. Or you know, you can create, with the new Alexa for Shopping, you can create sort of scheduled actions like if they're, you know, my favorite cereal, I have this cereal that I really like from England that's really expensive but I never buy it unless it's on sale.
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What's it called?
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It's called Alpen A L, P E N. So I could just set up. I'd be more than happy for a, a bot to go and buy me Alpen if it costs less than $20, which doesn't happen often, but I don't have time to go and check that myself constantly. So you know, next time Alpin drops to 15, just buy it for me. So you know that those types of agentic experiences. This is something we've seen Google go full on with this week with Google IO and its new shopping features. But this is something we're just starting to see a lot of. There's definitely concerns around whether this is going to be a good thing, how much you really want that kind of back and forth interaction when you're shopping. But the potential here is really interesting. And from the smart home side, the other new feature that Alexa for Shopping brings and this is really exciting for me is a much better Interface too to Amazon.com on your show devices. So now, and this has always been something that I found I've struggled with show devices, they just aren't great touchscreen interactive experiences. Now you have a full new experience on your Echo Show Smart display that's sort of a fully integrated so you can use Voice and touch to navigate Amazon.com when you're doing your shopping, you're doing your subscribe and Save or set, you know, any of anything you would do on Amazon.com on a computer or on a phone. You can now use Voice and touch on your show device. And you know, most of my Amazon shopping is revolving around kitchen supplies or something that I'm doing in my home. So having that kind of interface I think is really interesting. So, yeah, it's a big change. It does, yeah. I mean, how do you feel about it? Are you a big. Do you use Alexa? I don't know.
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I do. So I do use, I do use Amazon's assistant for. Mostly it is just to stay up with what's going on. Right. I want to make sure that I know what's going on. I have, I think the only time that I have used the assistant to buy something was when there were special deals that were available if you used your voice to buy it. So I've told the story before, but I don't know if I've done it here. I remember it was a prime day and this has been many years ago now because I lived in Missouri at the time and I got this or saw that there was a deal on this cute little stuffed animal for like a dog toy. And it was a little duck. And so if you ordered it through the, through the Echo, then you would get, I don't know, it was like 25, 30% off. So obviously I did. And it was so funny because I think it was sort of a bit of a lesson that I needed. When it arrived, it was actually bigger than my dog was. And so I just, I only saw it in passing, didn't have the scale, like it hadn't gone and looked at what it actually looked like as I normally do when I'm, you know, shopping for products. And so it was kind of like a. Oh, this is one of those things where you don't want it. Mindlessly doing it in the background doesn't work.
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And that's, that's the advantage of this new interface with the Echo show devices is that you can actually see and get much more like visual feedback because the voice first issue with Alexa, shopping was always a problem. And you know, this has been widely reported that everyone, Amazon thought oh, Echo Devices, we're going to sell tons of these cheap so that people will buy more stuff with their voice in their home. And that never happened really. People just didn't because of, you know, that, that type of friction and also because you want much more interaction and feedback when you're shopping. Like you, you know, really want to know what you've got, what you're getting. And so I think this is an improvement on that side. But also it's definitely a way that Amazon's gon. People use Alexa to buy stuff because they stuck it in Amazon.com, so you can't avoid it now.
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Yeah, so I, I've never, here's, this was what was interesting and I don't, I, I don't know if you relate to this, but I've used a long time a site called Camel Camel Camel and if anyone's never, if anyone out there has not heard of it, Camel Camel Camel is a site that lets you basically pop in an Amazon link and then it will show you the history of the price of the product and give you the ability to set prices that you want to be emailed about should the product drop to that. And I have always used that tool and I saw that Rufus, the sort of pre predecessor to this was allowing similar functionality. But here's the thing, I thought this is by Amazon though and would it not behoove the company to sort of make sure that yes, you're getting a sale, but perhaps maybe not the best possible sale because that's more money. I just don't know what is, what would be in the benefit of Amazon first party perhaps to provide those deep, deep discounts and like history that has every single price drop and fluctuation included in it. Whereas you do see that from Camel Camel Camel. So what I'm saying is my skepticism got in the way of me sort of trusting Rufus and, and so I never really used that tool. But have you, did you ever use it, did you, you know, try it out?
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No. Well, and that's, that is now part of what you can do with Alexa for shopping. And it is. And I think, and I've seen this comment made, it's like, well now then if you go in and say, okay, one of the features is you can go in and say like my alpen, I won't buy this until it's $15. And so now basically you're telling Amazon how much you will pay for something and it maybe it won't show you when it goes to 13 because it knows you'll pay 15 and that. I mean, there's no way of proving that they're doing that. But yes, that, that does feel like once you've, and also once there's enough data out there of like how much someone will pay for a product, if lots of people are saying, you know, like robot vacuums for example, always on sale, people always looking for deals, you know, okay, I know I want a robot vacuum that does this, this and this and I'll pay this amount. Okay, now we're going to serve up to you the products that will fit this and maybe not show you the cheaper ones. I mean, are they doing that? Will they do that? Probably. I don't know. But you know, these tools are useful and if there are tools out there like Camel, Camel, Camel, and there are a few that do that, it makes sense that Amazon is going to try and integrate that kind of functionality into its products directly rather than using third parties. But I would say, yeah, maybe be skeptical and use both to start with and see if you see any differences if that's something that you've been doing to date. Yes.
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Now there was another aspect of this which is buy for me elsewhere.
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Yes.
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How is Amazon getting away with that and do we know how that's going to work? Are you using your Amazon wallet, so to speak, with your, your credentials? There has, has this been, have there been any examples provided, like demos? Yeah, that part of it was really shocking to me that Amazon would even sort of risk the potential negative outcomes of somebody saying, you know, go here and buy this if it ever comes up and then they go and they buy it. And because they didn't put a limit in it of only if it's under $1,000, then suddenly Amazon's buying some thousand dollar thing.
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Yeah. And this is I think going to be an issue that we're going to see across this new push for agentic shopping. And it's one of the biggest sort of roadblocks for people Trust think you have to be able to set a limit if you, and, and if it doesn't, if it ignores your limit, then Amazon should be liable for that and refund you your money. I mean, that's one of the big benefits of Amazon, isn't it? Like you can always get a refund. There's very rarely an option a time when you're not going to get a refund. But one of the problems with this buy for me feature we've seen because this actually launched a while ago, last year, I believe is when it first came out on the Rufus capability. But there are a lot of retailers that don't want to be on Amazon and then having Amazon coming and buying from them for you on Amazon was creating a lot of friction and retailers being upset about this, this process happening. So, but because, and this is something we're going to see throughout this agentic AI push. And my, my esteemed boss, Nilay Patel calls it the DoorDash problem because you don't want the company. Many companies don' to be disintermediated by agentic AI. They want that relationship directly. Like the current issue with Agentic, one of the things that Alexa plus pushes in the home is I can, it can order you food through services or an Uber through services. But you know, how does Uber and DoorDash feel about that? Like they are being disintermediated. So they're making partnerships and that's, that's how they're getting through it. But not every company is making partnerships and that's, that's, that's going, you know, it's like it's going to cause significant issues. We're basically going to end up with the Internet just being agents talking to each other and no people or companies actually involved. So it's going to be one to watch for sure.
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Absolutely. And we will be keeping an eye on where this goes and, you know, maybe I'll have to give it a shot, just again, try it out, figure it out and perhaps I'll get some Alpine of my own.
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It's so good.
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It looks good. Honestly, I looked it up as you. It looks very good. Looks very tasty. There are like three different flavors, though, so you'll have to tell me which kind, which variety you regular with the.
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On the brown packet. Regular.
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Brown. There we go. Brown packet, Brown packet. All right, let's take a quick break. Before we come back with my story of the week, I want to tell you about Threat Locker, bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Threat Locker's Zero Trust platform now delivers the industry's most comprehensive suite of zero trust solutions, protecting endpoints, networks and the cloud. By extending Zero Trust enforcement to the cloud services and company networks, ThreatLocker ensures that devices are validated through a secure broker before connecting to platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Asana, Google Workspace and GitHub. Even if a user is successfully phished, attackers cannot access resources unless they have possession of the user's trusted device. ThreatLocker works across all industries, provides 24.7us based support. It supports Windows, Mac and Linux environments and enables comprehensive visibility and control. Rob Thackeray, End User Technical Architect at Heathrow Airport, had this to say Threat Locker was the most intuitive solution we tested and the responsiveness of the organization, the willingness to to engage with us, set up a demo and work with us on weekly audit reviews was very good. It's great to have an ongoing relationship with a company that's so responsive to our requests. Trusted by global enterprises such as JetBlue, the Indianapolis Colts, and the Port of Vancouver, Threat Locker consistently receives high honors in industry recognition, G2 high performer and best support for enterprise summer 2025 peer spot ranked number one in application control and GetApp's best functionality and features award in 20 confidently ensure users have access to consistent, safe network connections. Offices, remote users, internal servers and critical services can maintain smooth operations without the need to open inbound ports or deploy traditional VPN solutions. Your end users will get the secure, reliable internal system access they need without complex infrastructure changes. Get unprecedented protection quickly, easily and cost effectively with ThreatLocker. Visit threatlocker.com TWIT to get a free 30 day trial and learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. That's threatlocker.com TWIT. Thank you so much to ThreatLocker for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All righty, let's head back to the show. It is time for my Story of the week, joined this week by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. And this story look is a lot of drama and the elephant is in the room right over my shoulder.
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Over a. Oh, you have one?
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I do. Right there.
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Okay. Yes. Excited about this.
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Senior editor Sean Hollister has a piece out today titled Beep you, bamboo. How one private message could change the face of 3D printing. And it's exactly the kind of story that sounds like, you know, a bit of a niche hobbyist squabble. And then you realize that really the conversation here is about who controls the hardware you buy, I say as I again look over the shoulder at my my bamboo 3D printer. Bambu lab makes what are widely considered the best, most accessible 3D printers on the market right now. It's why I bought mine, knowing that it would be accessible, easy to use. It's the, you know, the company was sort of on track. I think I've heard people describe it as the Apple of 3D printing, but the company then sent A private Reddit message to one developer who, who had posted some code. And then Bamboo said, could you take this code down? And then the whole open source community lit up. I mean, we're talking $10,000 pledges, go F yourself videos, and even the father of the AGPL license calling Bamboo a bad actor. So the question is, did Bamboo actually do something egregious here or is it just protecting its ecosystem? That is where things get kind of difficult to figure out because, look, things kicked off with a single private message. I believe it was April 22nd. So just about a month ago that Bamboo reached out to developer Jarksek and forgive me for mispronunciation therein on Reddit and the tone, you know, it started out polite. The company said, hey look, we wanted to warn you that upcoming changes will break your code and said, we kindly ask, this is direct quote, we kindly ask you to consider removing the current connection approach as it mimics official Bambu Lab software. The developer responded reasonably, said, you know, I'm ready to pull the entire project from GitHub, thanked them for noticing his work, and then asked to be properly acknowledged because he believed that there was a security gap that he had found, and then also said, oh, and maybe whenever you are acknowledging, you could give me some gear like that flagship H2D printer. Well, bamboo wasn't interested in rewarding someone for promoting third party tools that compete with its own products. And that's when, as Sean Hollister over the Verge put it, Bamboo quote started talking to Jerk Sec like a mobster, saying, we wanted to speak with you first and handle this in a constructive way. That said, we allow this approach to continue. Then it escalated from there. Bamboo told him, or sent him a cease and desist order. Oh no, sorry. Bamboo told him that a cease and desist order was already drafted and then invited him to read up on section 1201 of the DMCA. Here's the thing though. Bamboo never sued, never sent the cease and desist, never even filed the DMCA takedown. Jerk took the code down voluntarily and then left a note implying he'd been treated like a criminal. Which is when the Internet pounced. Whoa. Things got wild. So I want to start by talking, because this is an ongoing conversation that you hear about in in tech, right? It's this idea that despite the fact that I own this piece of hardware, purchased this piece of hardware, the stuff that makes it go zoom, makes it go vroom. I don't own, I am licensing it. And we've seen that also in media, when we rent a film, they're very clear about what a rental actually is. And by that I mean renting online, it's all about giving you the, the sort of temporary access, but you don't own that thing. And you know, it's, it's a mixture. It's interesting, Jen, because it's sort of an all sides situation, right? It's. Sometimes we talk about owning the hardware and we have right to repair. That comes into play where, yeah, we own the hardware, but do we really? Because we have to get the parts serviced by you instead of us being able to do it. So is that true ownership? But then there's the software side of things, of, you know, if, if I were to take the software off of this device, then it doesn't work anymore. I, I can't put my own software on there and make it work. And then you add another wrinkle, which is these devices are. And for people who are listening and not watching, I'm gesturing again at 3D printer behind me. These devices are traditionally for the sort of maker tinkerer communities where ownership and creation and adjustments and all of those things are part of what's the fun of it. And Bamboo in its initial iterations had created a tool that was very open and could be adjusted and you could make lots of changes to it. The difference here is that Bamboo has essentially taken, I mean, and the company itself says so they make a, they make the hardware, right? And then they offer a program that is called Bambu Studio. But here's the thing. Bambu Studio is actually a fork of a slicer, which is the tool that's used to turn 3D objects into commands that a 3D printer can read and understand to go layer by layer. That's why it's called a slicer, because it's slicing it by layers. And it's based, the company calls it based on Prusa Slicer by Prusa Research, which is also, I should note, based on an earlier program called Slicer by Alessandro Ranolucci. But in either of those cases, these tools are not able, or Bamboo Studio is not able to exist without them. It's not just based on. It is a fork of meaning it's using the same code. So the only thing that's unique about what Bamboo does is its networking authentication mechanism where it connects and communicates with the 3D printer. So bamboo has put forth this idea that because they have architected the network plugin, then they can set rules around how the tool is used while not skating the Rules of agple that make it so that you basically can't lock things down. There's a lot of nuance in this, of course. And I also want to quickly mention that the developer making this tool that kind of bypasses the network to allow you to control, he just wanted to keep Bambu software from breaking compatibility with a third party multicolor system. And so he made a version of Bambu Studio that would allow the different multicolor system, which I'll talk about in a second, to be able to work with the printer, a multicolor system. That's actually this thing that I have stacked on top of the printer. I have bamboos because it's the only one that I could use because I was not this developer who figured out a way to do this. Otherwise it lets you have multiple reels of filament and that way the printer can switch between them as needed if you're making a multicolor print. So there's again so much here. But ultimately Jed, I kind of wanted to talk to you about, you know, the, the smart home area. Do you feel like I do that? That area also kind of started out as a tinkerer sort of maker space and now as it's gone more commercial, it has resulted in cloud connectivity that requires, you know, buying those first. What's, what's your take on sort of the workarounds that people have come up with in, in smart home stuff and at the same time the benefits of going with just lock in and what you get there?
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Yeah, actually it's definitely been an ongoing issue and in fact I've just popped this in the chat. I just posted an article about this this morning about how the cost of the smart home is going up because everything is becoming focused on subscriptions and cloud based and using companies proprietary systems. Especially with the recent infusion of AI into the smart home, everything is much more focused on, you know, we can deliver all these AI features. If you stay in our ecosystem and you pay us $20 a month, you're going to get all of these extra features and you know, there are a lot of benefits and I've written about this in the past to AI in the smart home, which is a slightly different conversation. But the issue is what you point to the difference between having this sort of curated walled garden ecosystem where everything just works works versus having you know, these, the more open source, open standard experience where everything should work together. But you also are going to, you know, run into a lot of these issues that you've, that this exemplifies because you don't have one company kind of managing it all. And it really comes down to what you, your comfort level, I think. And also so, you know, I think one of the biggest struggles with the open source side of the smart home is security and reliability, you know, because you, you end up having to do a lot of work yourself, but you have the control. So which is that payoff? You have to decide what you feel most comfortable about. And I think a lot of my readers and probably a lot of listeners to this, to this podcast would prefer to have the control and manage it themselves and not have, have, you know, the worry that someone's going to come in and just change your features because of a CL of cloud connectivity. And that has happened a lot. I mean, one prime example of this in the smart home is the MYQ smart garage door controller, which I know we've put on the show before, but that was a device that had, that was open and had lots of connections in the sort of Tinkerer ecosystem, Home assistant and various other protocols could, could access it. And then the company just locked it down and said, nope, this is ours, we want to do it this way. And there. And now they really, I mean you don't, I don't think you can use it with anything now. So. But people have this hardware in their home that they paid for that had a functionality that they used that they now cannot use and that, that type of thing really gives the smart home a bad name. So yeah, it's, and what's happening in this instance though, it feels much more kind of spurious because this company is built on top of the open source community. And I think that is, that's where it's, I mean it's one thing if you're a proprietary hardware company and you've developed something and people have figured out ways to use it and you stop them. Not great, but okay, you can see where they're coming from. But a company that has used the open source source community to get to the point that it's on now and then turns around and says, yeah, no, that's not a good look.
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A
I, I so agree. And I mean the other aspect of it, when you say built on the open source community, that is a multi layered truth. Because also the people purchasing these in the first place, the people who helped get this company to where it is now, those are open source community members. Those, those are the people who thought that it was cool in the first place and hacked on it and made it what it is. I want to Quickly note that, that there does seem to be some disagreement on if a GPL is this sort of slam dunk moment that advocates think it is. Because the thing is there are two actual open source attorneys who have kind of thrown cold water on the idea that this violates any AGPL rules. Kyle Mitchell says it's quite possible that Bamboo doesn't need to share everything that touches its open source code, especially cloud services, because the AGPL doesn't clearly say that web and cloud services have to be shared too. And then there's another, another attorney who says that a plug in would generally be part of what's called corresponding source. But also that the courts have basically never weighed in on the AGPL text. There are no definitive answers to be found, just positions to take. Wow, this sounds like, I don't know, football or something. Which are just predications about what court would do or, excuse me, predictions, not predications, predictions about what courts would do. So we don't even know A, if this has any legs, but also B, who can actually sue. Generally only the people who wrote the code, not just any angry customer are allowed to sue under this. And so we've got, you know, we don't really know where this is going. And also there is an argument to be made, unfortunately for Bamboo's side of things, which is that the company has always said the reason why it uses a custom network plugin that requires authorization is for security's sake. And we've seen, you know, MQ mqtt and we've actually seen MQTT commands, which is how these printers can be remote controlled. We've seen some ways that unprotected MQTT has been used by hackers and in, in not great ways. So that is something that we'd have to be aware of, particularly if it meant that like the whole network of 3D printers suddenly stopped working because of a DDoS attack or something like that. So yeah, yeah, there's, there's, that was,
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C
that was my Q's argument against the open source element of what was happening with its, its garage door controllers because they said it was a vector for attackers and there had been too much, much traffic to their devices. But I think what is interesting here and how it does relate to the smart home is as these open source communities become the basis and the foundation for business models and companies that are creating products in people's homes. Like your, I mean, that's a large appliance sitting in your home right there. Yeah, it is that, that actually some kind of framework and rules around this is is going to be really valuable and important going forward. So these types of use case, these types of examples where you know being highlighted is important so that these problems can be resolved. Because it's great to have open source but we also need that we need some guardrails for sure.
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A
I agree, I agree. Well Jen, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's always a pleasure to get to chat with you. If people would like to follow you online and keep up with all the great work you're doing, where are the places they should go to do so.
- [37:04]
C
Yeah, so I'm@the verge.com you can read all my articles on my author profile page there. And then I I frequent the socials on Blue sky and threads at Smart Home Mama. And yeah, I'm here once a month.
- [37:20]
A
Thank you. All right, we're going to take a quick break because I want to tell you about Outsystems bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Outsystems the Leading Agenda Agentic Systems Platform Outsystems helps businesses bridge the enterprise gap to their agentic future where the constraints of the past give way to unlimited capacity and scale. You can architect, deliver and scale governed agentic systems with agility and trust using one open and unified platform Power secure company wide agentic orchestration for core business operations. Outsystem provides the only agentic systems that are unified, Unified, Agile and enterprise proven. Outsystems is unified which means that it will enable you to build, run and govern apps and agents on a single platform. It's Agile, allowing you to innovate at the speed of AI without compromising quality or control and it's enterprise proven and trusted by enterprises for mission critical AI applications and durable innovation. Outsystems is the secret weapon behind the world's most successful companies. They're not just for small apps, they're for the massive complex systems that run banks, insurance companies and government services. Outsystems even helps companies with aging IT environments bridge the gap to the AI future without a rip and replace nightmare. For example, Outsystems provides the safest and fastest way for an enterprise to go from we need an AI strategy to we have a functioning agentic system. Stop wondering how AI will change your business and start building the agents that will lead it. Visit outsystems.com TWIT to see how the world's most innovative enterprises use Outsystems to engineer, orchestrate and govern agentix systems quickly and cost effectively. Without compromising reliability and security. That's O u t s y s t e m s.com twit to book a demo. Our thanks to Outsystems for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break. And smart glasses have spent years stuck somewhere between science fiction and gimmick. But the technology may finally be catching up to the ambition at Google. I o a fresh wave of Android XR hardware stepped into the spotlight, and our next guest got to wear it before almost anyone else. He's here to tell us what these glasses are actually like to use and where they might be headed. Joining us today to talk about it is Wired Zone Julian Chikatu. Hello and welcome. Julian, Hi.
- [39:50]
B
Thanks for having me on the show.
- [39:51]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So, first and foremost, when you first put on these reference glasses, which I believe that's the case, they're considering them reference glasses at the time from Samsung and Google, what kind of stood out to you physically? The weight, the fit, the design? All of the above.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It was super lightweight. So, like, you know, they feel a little heavier than traditional glasses. I can't remember the exact number of the top of my head, but I remember it's something like 4953 grams or something like that is what I'm remembering. So they're really lightweight. The arms are still a little thick, but outside of that, you know, if you look closely, you'll obviously see the cameras on the. On the frames, but outside of that, they kind of blow look like normal glasses. And I think that's. Even with the reference design, they looked pretty polished. And of course it's going to look different in the final version when it's actually like Warby Parker or Gentle Monster making the glasses. But other than that, the other most immediate thing that came to mind was also when I first listened to them some music and I was like, wow, this sounds remarkably nice. Like, the audio just sort of encapsulated my head and sounded really like robust and around my head and just really. It sounded really good. Honestly, I was like, within 10 seconds of listening it to that way, I was like, you know, I could go without having to wear earbuds if I could just sort of, sort of have this experience. And I also handed it over to the person who was giving me the demo just to see if I could hear what, you know, if there was a lot of music bleed and I could barely hear sounds like at 50% volume, like it was just Like a little bit here and there, and then that was in a quiet room. So realistically, like, if you're walking out and about, no one's going to really hear what you're listening to. So those two things really stood out.
- [41:38]
A
That is actually really interesting. I've used some of these different glasses before and thought a, I am making everyone listen to what I'm listening to. And also it all sounds tinny. So it's really cool to hear that that's a little bit more robust. Could you actually walk us through that demo experience? What was that like? What were you actually able to do with these glasses? Did they make you sort of. Oh, no, don't go there. And then what features did Google have you try?
- [42:06]
B
Yeah, it wasn't sort of like, try them on, go through the entire interface yourself type of situation. It was just a very controlled, like, Here are like 4 to 5 things to try specifically. So all of it, almost, yeah, almost all of it was run around triggering Gemini to do something. So first, for example, I pressed and held on the arm of the glasses and I looked at like a little, little board game next to me, and I just asked Gemini, hey, what's this board game? And it obviously uses the cameras to detect. And it said it was Chinese checkers. And then one of the things that Google was touting is that you can. Then it'll ask you, hey, do you want me to teach you how to play? I was like, no, can you actually save that into a Google keep note? And it did that within a couple of seconds. It just sort of created a note on how to play Chinese checkers that I could visit at any time. And so the idea is that, say you're cooking, you see a dish somewhere, you're like, hey, can you remind me to find a recipe for this thing and save it in my keynotes? That's sort of the idea behind that. And I think everything that is largely Gemini, the experience here is obviously catering towards what it can see through the cameras. So the whole point is you basically have a Google lens strapped to your face where you can just identify things around you in the world and, and catalog them, categorize them, put them, tuck them away into your notes for future use, memory and all that. And I think that was one of the more common things I think most people will probably enjoy about that type of experience. And another one was being able to take a picture. So obviously you can take pictures with the glasses, but one of the big things that they're showing is instead of the process Right now where you take a photo and maybe you go into your camera app, gallery app to edit the photo where you say, you know, a lot of phones now offer the ability to remove trash or, you know, things that you don't want in your photos. Now with this you can just say, hey, Gemini, take a picture. And can you also remove the trash in the shot or can you add this little fun thing? And so basically instead of having to wait, as soon as you take the picture, if you have something like a Wear OS watch, you will get the preview of the original picture on your wrist immediately. If you have the display version of the game glasses, you'll get a preview of that as well. And then 45 seconds later, it'll send it directly to Google's Nano Banana image LLM and basically it will have done the work. And so I asked it to remove a plant in the shot and it did that pretty seamlessly within a couple of seconds. And I asked it to change the entire room's decor to a medieval hall. And it did that really impressively too.
- [44:42]
A
Oh, wow.
- [44:44]
B
It was as scary how quickly and easy it was. But Google's really into that right now.
- [44:51]
A
Absolutely. You spoke briefly about kind of the lenses versus or rather the displays versus the audio only. And of course there's a distinction there. Audio only glasses arriving first, displays built into the lenses perhaps coming later. Can you kind of talk about what separates these two tiers and what is it that the display version would potentially offer that you don't get with the audio version? And maybe why someone would go with just audio only version versus a display style version?
- [45:24]
B
Yeah, I mean, we don't have a lot of details on pricing yet, but I'm going to assume a large part of this is that the audio only glasses are going to be significantly cheaper than the ones with displays. There's two versions with displays. There's a monocular version where it's just one display projected onto the lens, and then there's a binocular where it's two. So you get an even richer experience with better fidelity. But obviously having a screen sort of elevates everything that happens. So for example, taking a picture, you'd actually be able to see that preview of the image after it captures it right on the display for a couple of seconds before it disappears versus audio only. You would have to pull out your phone or, you know, use your watch. Things like translation, where basically someone can walk up to you and start speaking a different language, you can turn on the translation mode and instead of just Hearing their voice being translated, you can actually see the text as well. And I assume that'll be the same case for real time transcription for when people are talking. Maybe you're hard of hearing or something and you'd be able to see that directly rather than just hearing it. And you know, navigation I think is another big one where people are going to use the glasses to walk around. And I think that's been a long term use case that Google has touted since the original Google Glass where you just see turn by turn navigations on a display. One of the cool things is you, if you're navigating with the display, you can actually see the turn by turn. But then if you look down, you'll see sort of like a Google Maps style view at the bottom with your blue dot in the center. So you can actually see a sort of a larger map view without having to pull out your phone. So there's sorts of these little things and of course notifications plus widgets, they have these generative widgets that you're, you'll be able to create so that you can have exactly what you want to see on your smart glasses interface. So we cycled through some, some, some widgets that they had created like you know, stocks or sports scores or weather related things that are specific to what you want to see. All that stuff is customizable. And I think, you know, the idea that you can just put exactly what you want on those glasses and see them right there.
- [47:27]
A
Nice. Now it does seem like Gemini doing a lot of the work here you described a few ways. How is it that the AI is using what the glasses can see and hear to help the wearer in the moment? Obviously, you know, changing the room to a medieval look is perhaps not in the moment, an incredibly helpful thing. But you said it happened so quickly. So I can only imagine some of the thoughts a, that Google is having about it and perhaps things that popped up for you on how this could be helpful in the moment.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah, so for example, you know, the idea is that, you know, for example, if you go to a museum, you're wearing your glasses, you maybe didn't buy the audio tour. Instead you just turn on Gemini and say, hey, could you like what's the history of this thing? And it'll actually completely tell you all of that. You could probably even flip through a book if you're at a bookshop and say, hey, I'm looking at this book, is it any good? And you can get that information right there then and there. The idea Is that things that you may have traditionally looked up when you're out there in the real world, walking around, you see something, you're like, oh, is that any good? Or what is is this? And things that you would do that action for? Now you just press and hold your arm. Gemini will see you don't have to add that context of what it is you're actually talking about and you just ask the question and it should simplify the whole process and ideally be a better, more in the moment experience that doesn't disrupt you as much as pulling a smartphone out of your pocket.
- [49:07]
A
Now you experienced the live translation feature. What was that like? How was it? Sort of. We've seen many different companies do many different variations of this and perhaps at times audio is enough, but there is this display version as well. Given that this is in some ways still a little bit nebulous, how did it differ between the two? And do you feel like live translation is getting to a place that it could be useful for people versus sort of more traditional methods of someone holding their phone here and then holding the phone out the other way?
- [49:49]
B
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day it's going to be a little awkward, even with the glasses, because for example, even if I can understand what they're saying, if I don't speak the language, they're going to have to pull out their phone and still hold it to my face so that they can understand what I'm saying. Right. So to a degree there's, there's still going to be that some type of friction there. But overall being able to hear like the guy just walked in front of me, started talking, it auto detected the language and it started translating it. And so with the audio only, I would hear it directly. There was a small delay with the display. I would see the text sort of generate as the person was speaking. What is kind of crazy though is that Google is also using AI to, to try to make the translator's voice sound like the person speaking. So that that way there's not much of a disconnect where you're hearing some other type of voice and it actually tries to match the pitch and the excitement. And that part actually worked pretty well, I would say. And it was the AI for one of the people was particularly excited and it was very like a different energy from the other person who was speaking and it kind of matched their tones. So I think that was pretty impressive. And yeah, you know, whether and how, you know, with translation, it's one of those things that these companies Always love to do. And it really works well in these demo situations. But then you take it out into the real world, like Apple's AirPods, you know, taking that out of the real world, and most people found that it actually doesn't really work that well, just the nature of how people interact and talk and the business busyness of life and environments around us. So who's to say exactly how well it will actually work in the real world? But again, in the control demo, it seemed to work pretty well.
- [51:31]
A
Wow. All right, now, beyond the Samsung and Google hardware, we've heard brands being mentioned, Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, xreal, who have played some role in this. Can you tell me, how do the roles differ and where does something like xreal's project or aura fit in?
- [51:50]
B
Yeah, so Samsung and Google are basically the, let's say, purveyors of the Android XR technology, hardware and the software experience. So they're making the miniaturization of the technology to fit in the glasses. They're doing the software, the glasses brands are basically doing the design. So they're focused on making sure the thing actually looks nice so that you'd want to wear it. So I imagine in the future maybe there will be other eyeglass brands that adopt the ambient Android XR portfolio. So we'd see some others likely cropping up in different styles. Whether or not luxottica will do it, who knows? Just because they already have an exclusive relationship with Meta and Ray Bans, but you never know. So that's sort of how that works. Now, the xrail partnership is xrail makes smart glasses already. They've been doing it for the longest time and they have one of the highest market shares, I think, for xreal glasses or smart glasses in general. They have been working with Google to create Android XR smart glasses, but they're different because these glasses are not quite the type that you sort of put on and go for a walk like all the other ones. These ones are, I don't know if you're aware of the Samsung Galaxy XR that came out last year or the Apple Vision Pro. Now, these are big, bulky headsets you put on and you get a full interface that you can move and interact with the world, virtual world, with your fingers, a handful of gestures. So these have Android apps, these have, you know, you can watch movies, play games, take zoom calls, do whatever you want in this virtual space, kind of like a mixed reality headset. This is basically miniaturizing that technology to fit in glasses. So glasses actually need to be tethered to a battery pack. So the battery pack can go in your pocket, but it basically is still a full computer that you're wearing. So honestly it kind of goes to show that like why would anyone want to buy something like the Galaxy XR or headset where you have to wear this hot like ugly bulky thing on your head rather than just a pair of glasses that you can. So much easier to travel with and just wear in general. So I think it's basically miniaturizing the tech. So you know, the be I just put these glasses on, I was able to interact with them with my fingers, you know, select apps and open all of them up. And one of the cool things is you can also plug them into all sorts of other devices. So you can plug them into laptops, for example, sample and project the screen on there, you can plug them into phones, project the screen, you can plug them into a Steam Deck. And I played Hollow Knight while streaming it basically to the display without having to look at the Steam Deck screen and crane my neck. And I asked about switch support and they said they don't have anything to share at the moment, but it sounded like this might be coming. So I think the idea is that this is an all in one smart glass device that basically lets you do anything and everything whether, whether it's work play again, not so much something that you probably will walk around in like the other smart classes, but this is more of like a fixed experience that is still impressive in its own right because the fact that you know you can interact with all these high power apps in this virtual space and just do that everywhere without looking completely stupid. Pretty impressive.
- [54:54]
A
We had a good question in the chat. When it comes to, we've seen sort of a, a transition over time with wearables where the Apple Watch for example at one point was this incredibly tethered device and Apple has made it more of a device that you don't necessarily need to have a phone paired with it to do so. How tethered are the current reference glasses to a phone and how independently can they work?
- [55:27]
B
Yeah, I think for the most part at the moment, I think a lot of it is relying on phone technology. So for example, even gps, there's no GPS in the glasses. So when you're navigating it's using your phone cellular technology. However Google for example said it's augmenting that with VPs. It's a visual positioning system. So for example, if you walk around and your blue dot, typically you know how it gets confused you can use your phone's camera to, to like, take a quick screen grab of like the environment around you and it'll update your, and calibrate your compass position. It's using that technology alongside your phone's GPS to be able to figure out exactly where you are when you're using Spark glasses. So I think a lot of the technology of Gemini is obviously also going to be sending it to the cloud rather than like working locally. So I think a lot of that is relying on your phone's connection to sort of send it up and down because these glasses, glasses don't have cellular connectivity by themselves. So they're definitely very tethered, I think still in that sense to your smartphone and reliant on that. So I don't think at the quite, I don't think at the moment you're going to be able to like leave your phone behind to get the full functionality and features. But, you know, that's probably not that far off in the future where someone will probably come out with a version that has those capabilities and, and offers a more richer cellular experience.
- [56:50]
A
Lastly, I just wanted to know you've reviewed mobile and wearable tech for quite a while and having spent time with these, where do you think that Android's XR glasses stand right now and sort of a prediction going forward stand at their release? What still needs to happen, do you think, in general, before these devices catch on or have they already caught on?
- [57:14]
B
I mean, so we have, I mean, these were, these are going to be the first smart glasses powered by Android XR coming later this year. So I think there's a lot of excitement there because obviously Google has been one of the first companies to have ever done this before, you know, famously not in a great way. So it's going to be a real test to see how well they hold up and how much of a change we'll see from the 10 years to since the Google Glass debuted. But whether, you know, people, I think we need to hear a little bit more on privacy. Smart glasses and cameras on them are really a touch point for a lot of people. A lot of people are concerned and I think it being a company like Google, people are inevitably going to wonder, is this going to face tracking? Is it going to be identifying people? Is it going to secretly record? Is there an LED to be able to tell when someone's recording, recording, Is there a hardware switch to like cut the cameras off? Is there, you know, those types of things? I think there's another big angle there where people are going to be very concerned and I think Google hasn't really talked about that a ton. Inevitably, I think people are just going to have to decide whether that's something that they want or want to bring to other people when they wear these glasses. And maybe people just have to figure out a way to do it in a more societally appropriate manner. Manner.
- [58:38]
A
Well, Julian Chikatu, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's been a pleasure getting to talk to you and hear about your time with these smart glasses. Of course folks can head over to Wired if they want to check out the work that you're doing. Is there anywhere else they should go to keep up with what you've got?
- [58:54]
B
No, just wired.com is perfect.
- [58:56]
A
Awesome. Thank you so much.
- [58:58]
B
Thanks. I appreciate it.
- [58:59]
A
All right folks, we are going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with with the little story of the week I have for you. But first I want to tell you about Melissa bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. You know Melissa, the trusted data quality expert. Since 1985, 84% of organizations struggle with inaccurate or duplicate data and of course that's going to impact everything from fraud prevention to AI performance. Melissa has been solving this for going on 41 years now and here's what that means for your business. It means global address verification, which will validate and standardize addresses across more than 240 countries. Mobile identity verification, which matches customers to mobile numbers, helps to cut fraud, opens SMS channels. On average a database actually contains 8 to 10% duplicate records. With Melissa's matchup technology, you can identify non exact matching duplicate records that would traditionally additionally go missed. 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Melissa's solutions and services well they are GDPR and CCPA compliant, FedRamp and ISO 27001 certified and meet SOC2 and HIPAA high Trust standards for information security management. So get started today with 1,000 records cleaned for free@melissa.com Twitter that's melissa.com TWIT thank you, Melissa, for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, back from the break. And I wanted to mention Apple has put out its annual accessibility preview this week, typically does so ahead of WWDC drop topping the news ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. This year. The through line, well, you can imagine, is Apple Intelligence. According to Apple's own press release out of Cupertino on May 19, the company is threading its on device AI into the accessibility tools people already lean on every day. Voiceover, magnifier, voice control, and the accessibility reader. We're talking about richer image descriptions for blind and low vision users, the ability to navigate your iPhone by, by just describing what you see on screen and automatically generated subtitles for any uncaptioned video. Across the Apple ecosystem, there's also a genuinely striking one. Controlling a power wheelchair with your eyes using Apple Vision Pro. Apple says all of this is coming later this year with privacy handled on device. So let's kind of take a look at what's going on as we break into global Accessibility Awareness and of course, double bwdc. Firstly, I want to mention that it is often the case that features and tools that the brilliant accessibility teams at Apple create later make their way into the products that we use outside of accessibility. One of those features that we first saw in accessibility that later came to sort of everyone as a, as a standard was the ability to navigate your Apple watch using wrist wrist gestures. Because of the way that these sensors on the back of the phone paired with the, on the back phone on the back of the watch paired with the gyroscopes and, and other little sensors inside are able to detect what your wrist and your fingers are doing. That was originally an accessibility feature and then we saw that come to the entirety of the Apple Watch lineup. When it comes to this wheelchair situation, I want to be clear that Apple is not designing its own wheelchair. No. Apple Vision Pro's eye tracking system. So that is one of the features of the Apple Vision Pro that makes it possible for you to see everything around you and see everything around you quickly because of what's called foveated rendering. Um, the eye tracking system is being turned into a drive controller for power wheelchairs. It's aimed at people for whom a joystick isn't an option. Uh, you know, it doesn't require frequent recalibration, which is nice. Apple's own eye tracking technology and it works in a variety of lighting conditions because of course you are wearing this headset that essentially blocks out outside the light. So it is just the light coming from within and gives you more control therein. When according to my understanding here, when it comes to other types of tracking technology used as input for power wheelchairs, oftentimes there's regular calibration that needs to take place or I should say frequent calibration that needs to take place that can make things a little more difficult. Difficult. This is going to support both Bluetooth and wired connections for these drive systems and it does require if you do go with the wired system, buying the Apple Vision Pro developer strap. It's intended for use in controlled environments, Apple says, and not an unrestricted go anywhere sort of sort of feature. Now that's not all really cool, but not all. Voiceover and Magnifier also get Apple Intelligence powered descriptions. So when you're using the Image Explorer in Voiceover, which lets you explore images and understand what you are, what is being displayed, it now uses Apple Intelligence to give more detailed descriptions of images system wise wide. So photographs, scanned bills, personal records, it has more information about those and can say you know, this is, this is a receipt that has this information on. It's just a little bit better at recognizing what you're looking at, what you're trying to view rather and what it actually what the context is in the situation. There's also live recognition that's gotten an update. So Voiceover users can press the iPhone action button to ask a question about whatever's in the camera's viewfinder and then get a detailed response. Plus I think more importantly ask follow up questions in order to dive into what's being shown. Magnifier has this describe my surroundings capability. It's of course the high contrast interface that's built for low vision users. And this does move the tools from reading what's on screen to interpreting and answering questions about what's going on. As a view through that camera, Voice Control drops the memorization has memorization now. So Voice Control uses natural language. Users can describe on screen buttons instead of memorizing exact labels or numbers. That's important because as it stands you do need to memorize how Voice Control refers to different options objects. So instead of trying to use a glossary to figure out what the terminology is, you just say what you see. Tap the guide about best restaurants, tap the purple folder. So it can also help users overcome barriers when elements aren't properly labeled for accessibility. So that means that if you've got third party developers out there who are not making their apps accessible, first of all, I'm sorry but shame on you. You should be. But if they're not, and that is too often the case, then this is a great way for people to be able to use those apps when they otherwise might not be able to. It's English only in the us, Canada, the UK and Australia for you know, at launch when it launches. But we'll see if it comes to more places
- [67:43]
B
Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney plus let's go get ready for a new case.
- [67:48]
A
We're gonna crack this case and prove we're the greatest partners of all time.
- [67:51]
C
New friends you are Gary Desnake and
- [67:55]
A
your last name Desnake Dream Team Habitats Zootopia has a secret reptile population.
- [68:03]
B
You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.
- [68:06]
A
You're clearly we're going to it Zootopia
- [68:09]
B
2 now available on Disney plus rated PG.
- [68:13]
A
Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees. Turn the temperature down with blinds.com and get up to 50% off custom window treatments like solar roller shades and more during the Memorial Day Mega Sale. Whether you want to DIY it or have a pro handle everything, we've got you free samples, real design experts and zero press pressure. Just help when you need it. Shop up to 50% off site wide and huge savings on door busters. Right now during the Memorial Day mega sale@blinds.com rules and restrictions apply. You also can look forward to generated subtitles for any video. So on device speech recognition will automatically generate subtitles for uncaptioned video. That means personal clips, it means video from friends and family. It means streamed content and that's going to work. I love this across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro. I will have this enabled at all times probably. I love captions. If I could have captions in my eyes I would. I barely know what anyone's ever saying ever, so it would be nice to know. I should say in real life these headphones help, but in real life I'm like what did you say? So having captions would be really nice. And that accessibility reader takes on harder material. It now handles complex source material so scientific articles with multiple columns and images and tables and makes them better to read easier to read. For users with dyslexia or people with low vision, you get on demand summaries which will let readers get an overview before diving in and built in translation which lets Users read of course in their own native language while keeping that custom formatting the font and colors. It's a little akin to Google Lens when you hold it up to translate a sign and it does a good job of sort of matching the color of the background and displaying the text over the top to try to keep the sign looking the same. Think of it like that, but in article format. When it comes to hardware, yes, that also got a mention. The Hikawa Gripenstand for iPhone ended up being incredibly popular and it is available today in three new colors and available globally. So that is something that you are able to purchase as well. I had no idea that this thing was going to be so popular. I don't think Apple did either. So it sold out for a while, but it is back and Sony Access Controller can now connect as a game controller on iOS, iPados andMacOS. The Sony Access controller has configurable thumbstick, it has nine built in buttons, up to four external buttons and you can pair two controllers together so there's just a little bit more functionality therein and a few quick kits Vehicle Motion cues Woo. I love this feature. Come to Vision OS to reduce motion sickness for Vision Pro passengers and moving vehicles. If you don't know what vehicle motion cues are, if you've ever gotten sick while riding in a car, then that's this is a feature for that it will. The theory is that because we do know, or we're pretty certain that the reason why we feel ill in a car is because those the sensations that our body is experiencing is different from what our brain expects or I should say what our brain is perceiving does not match the experience that our body is having. And that makes the brain go, you have probably eaten something that is causing you to hallucinate and is therefore poisonous. And so I'm going to make you sick so that you throw up and and get that terrible, terrible thing out of you. If we can get the brain to feel like what you are seeing and feeling are matching up, then the theory is it will not have your brain trying to get you to throw up so that you are not having whatever poisonous thing it thinks you've had. Vehicle motion cues will display little dots on the screen that move at different speeds and in different directions depending on how the phone senses the car is moving. So I have this turned on if I'm a passenger in a car. If I'm looking at my phone, those dots I see them and it just helps the brain feel more comfy. That is coming to the Vision Pro name recognition also coming. It alerts deaf or hard of hearing users when someone says their name and works across 50 languages. There's a new API that lets sign language interpretation developers add a human interpreter into a live FaceTime call and made for iPhone. Hearing aids will pair and hand off between Apple devices more reliably. You also get larger text on tvos and touch accommodations become a little bit easier easier to use. So lots of fun new features for accessibility in the upcoming versions of Apple's platforms and we'll learn of course more about that at WWDC Proper folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Our show publishes every Thursday Twitter if you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, just the content and none of the ads. Well can I invite you to join our Club Twit TV Club Twit or use that QR code in the top corner there. Going there and then subscribing or joining the club for $10 a month, $120 a year gets you as I mentioned those ad free shows you also gain access to some special feeds. We have a feed that is our behind the scenes before the show after the show moments. We have a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events like the upcoming WWDC and recently Google I, Jeff Jarvis, Leo laporte and yours truly covered that event live as well as a feed that just has our awesome awesome club Twitch shows. I recently joined the the chat around Stacy's Book Club had a lot of fun with that. Stacy's Book Club publishes there my it's yes it has been announced Media Club is launching in June and the idea is that that book books are one form of media. Let's also look at other forms of media. So we're going to kind of COVID the gamut of different types of media and talk about those. It's a race right now in the poll between the Fifth Element and a three episode coverage of some of the most the best reviewed top rated animated shows. So Marge versus the Monorail, Rick and Morty Total Rick hall and Jurassic Bark from Futurama. So if you have not yet go vote in the poll there, where do you vote in the poll? Well you do that in the Club Twit Discord which you will also get an invite to when you join Club Twit again. Twit TV Club Twit. We'd love to see you. We'd love to have have you. And there's something else do. Is that something I could mention yet, John? The other thing that we're doing in the club. No comment. Okay. Yeah. I can't remember if we're supposed to say that yet. Let me just say this. Something else exciting is happening and it will be cool and it's something that's been asked for in the past and I'm glad that we're doing it. So that's all I can say right now because I can't remember if we're supposed to mention it yet. Anyway, there you go. I'm pulling a Leo. Except he would have fully mentioned it instead of just alluding to it. All right, that's all Twitter, TV Club Twit is there. If you want to follow me online, I'm ichasargent on many a social media network where you can head to Chihuahua Coffee. C H I H U A H U A Coffee. You can also check out these shows that I publish here on the network, including iOS today, hands on Apple, and of course, Hands on Tech. Join us this Sunday as we record some more episodes there. Thank you so much for being here with us today. We'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody.
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C
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