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Tech Brew Ride Home
Moar Meta Glasses
00:21:13
Meta launched $299 in-house Adventurer and Fury smart glasses plus a $399 Kylie Jenner Starfire. Trump signed two quantum-computing executive orders. South Korea's Kospi cratered 10% in a tech selloff, ByteDance debuted Seedance 2.5, and Meta paused its laptop-tracking program.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 I'm Brian McCullough. Today Meta launched new smart glasses Trump signed two quantum computing executive orders, South Korea's Cop C cratered 10% in a tech sell off, ByteDance debuted Seed Dance 2.5 and Meta paused its laptop tracking program. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. I'm getting to the age where I might pull a muscle just by thinking about stretching. That's why Blueprint's longevity mix has been such a game changer. Blueprint was started by Brian Johnson, more popularly known as the Don't Die guy. His latest endeavor in living longer and aging better led him to create Blueprint. With just one scoop. You'll get support for energy, cognitive performance, mood focus, sleep, cellular resil, healthy aging, science backed, precision dosed, no BS for a limited time only. Our listeners get 20% off plus free shipping at blueprint.bryanjohnson.com by using code TBRH at checkout. That's code TBRH@blueprint.brianjohnson.com for 20% off. After you purchase they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you brand new Meta Smart Glasses Quoting Bloomberg Meta Platforms, which helped popularize smart glasses through partnerships with Ray Ban and Oakley is going down market by launching lower priced models under its own brand for the first time. The social networking giant on Tuesday unveiled what it calls Meta Adventurer and Fury glasses, each priced at $299. That's $80 less then the second generation Ray Ban Meta Wayfarer model announced last year. Meta is also introducing a $399 Starfire model in collaboration with Kylie Jenner, aiming to appeal to a younger, more fashion focused demographic. While Meta designed the glasses, its partner Esseleur Luxottica, the parent company of Ray Ban and Oakley, will produce them. Esseler Luxottica's logo appears alongside Meta's on the inside of the temple arms and on the packaging. The in house designs come ahead of Apple's planned Smart Glasses deb next year. Similar to Meta, the iPhone maker designed the upcoming glasses itself. In an interview, Meta and Esseler luxottica executives said the new approach came in response to a desire for a more accessible price point. We were looking at brands together and trying to figure out what makes sense, said Axel Himmel. We were looking at brands together and trying to figure out what makes sense, said Alex Himmel, who runs Meta's wearables unit. We didn't really find one, so then it was just all right. You've got Ray Ban, Meta here, Oakley Meta here and Meta at the bottom. The Adventurer glasses look similar to Wayfarers, with rectangular designs and thin edges. They come in both regular and large sizes. The Fury looks similar to the Adventurer but are thicker. The Kylie Jenner glasses, meanwhile, have a slim oval shape, matching an increasingly popular style among women. Meta is offering several colors, including tortoise, black and green, as well as transition polarized and clear lenses. The new eyewear is also compatible with prescription lenses. The hardware and software features are large, in line with Meta's other screenless smart glasses. One exception is a new option to adjust the width between nose pads to three different levels by manually opening and closing the pads on the glasses. Meta recently rolled out Muse Spark, its new artificial intelligence model, and the functionality is included out of the box with the new models. Meta also hinted that it's considering a version of its glasses without a camera, focusing on an audio only experience for phone calls, media playback and interacting with its AI tools. The company wouldn't comment on when the glasses would be released or how they'd be branded, but said there are consumers who mostly use the microphone and audio based features only. A camera free option could both lower the price point and enable new styles, it said. Given the need to include fewer components, the larger the market gets, the more we can afford to have something different for more people, himmel said. The company has explored facial recognition tools for its glasses, although the tool isn't in active development as Meta works out the privacy and societal implications, according to Himmel. Ideally, he said, Meta's glasses could name people the user knows and who would want to be identified to the wearer, such as family, friends and associates. Meta's next step, the company said, is further expanding into more styles and brands with its partner and eventually diving into augmented reality glasses. It showed off an AR glasses prototype two years ago and could introduce a consumer grade version as early as next year, Bloomberg News has reported. End quote. By the way, Meta executives said dropping Ray Ban branding from these glasses helped lower the price point. Also, Meta's Starfire glasses with Kylie Jenner include a tiny gemstone on the lens, a metal nose pad to prevent absorbing makeup, and an AI version of Kylie's voice. Speaking of AI Quoting the Verge Speaking of killer use cases, Meta is quadrupling down on AI the new Meta glasses will all launch with Muse Spark, the first model out of Meta's superintelligence labs. It'll also be arriving in older Ray Ban and Oakley glasses in the US and Canada via a software update. Supposedly that means more helpful glasses at my hands on. I was told that Meta AI would now be less stiff, I'd be able to talk to it more naturally and get smarter responses. The AI now supports 14 more languages, including Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin, Hindi and Korean. Pedestrian turn by turn navigation is also coming to Meta's displayless glasses. Later this month, there will be a new dynamic photo feature that automatically takes multiple frames and then recommends the best one. I didn't get to try all of these features, but I did get a few live demos. Live Mandarin translations were pretty smooth, though I did experience a smidge of latency, likely due to all the crosstalk in the demo space. Ongoing conversations were a tad smoother, though. Meta AI is still a Chatty Cathy. Supposedly the AI will be better at recommendations. In a room with a tray full of trinkets, Meta AI and Kylie Jenner's voice responded to a prompt for recommendations by asking for more context about the types of colors, vibes and mood I was going for. When I responded with a cute purple keychain charm Meta as Kylie suggested, I think about charms shaped as grapes or perhaps a lavender donut, and that those could easily be found on Etsy or Instagram. A bit generic, but better answers than what I got when I first tested asking Meta AI for recommendations last year. I also asked Meta AI to estimate the caloric content for a plate of canapes. MetaAzkilee gave me a rough estimate of 280 calories, but admitted it wasn't sure about one prosciutto and fig concoction. Ultimately, it was a slightly better version of what I've tried before. I'll have to give it a more thorough test in every life, though I remain skeptical about whether Muse Spark or Gemini or any AI model really is smart and convenient enough now to override the public's privacy concerns regarding this tech. Nevertheless, these are affordable, well made, smart glasses and the widest available array of colors, styles, prescriptions and fits. But as I've said before, hardware hasn't been Meta's problem for some time now End quote. President Trump has signed two executive orders aimed at speeding the development of advanced quantum computers and mitigating the security threats they present, Quoting the Journal One of the orders the president signed Monday directs federal agencies, including the Energy Department, to work with the private sector and academics to deploy a quantum computer powerful enough to conduct scientific research by 2028. Such benchmarks are seen as critical to showing that the technology has real world applications. Quantum computers are capable of solving problems much faster than traditional supercomputer computers, making them a growing priority for countries around the world. Trump signed a second executive order directing agencies and government security experts to prepare for quantum systems that can evade standard encryption more quickly than previously anticipated. The goal is to bolster security systems across the government and private sector so that advanced quantum hackers can't take down critical infrastructure. The orders coincide with billions of dollars in funding for quantum companies being awarded by the Commerce Department and a private sector investment frenzy from companies including IBM, Microsoft and Google. Companies are betting on what is seen as a promising sector that can complement advances in artificial intelligence. Industry executives, including IBM chief executive Aravind Krishna and Ruth Peratt, president of Google parent Alphabet, attended Monday's Oval Office event. Tech giants and a swarm of startups are racing to build larger quantum systems, with the eventual goal of deploying computers that can consistently outperform traditional ones. Shares of many quantum companies have surged in recent months, though skeptics warn that the field has significant hurdles to overcome to fulfill its promise. The administration is hoping that the ambitious 2028 target for a system that can conduct scientific research will serve as a stepping stone for larger systems that can carry out tasks for businesses, a senior White House official said. The order focused on boosting quantum activity, directing the Energy Department, which conducts extensive quantum research, to identify the technical specifications needed to measure that goal. End quote. When inspiration strikes, you're usually not sitting at your desk ready to take notes. And honestly, some ideas are easier to say out loud than to type into your phone. That's where Plod Notepin S comes in. It's a small, wearable AI powered device about the size of a AA battery that lets you capture ideas and conversations completely hands free. So in those in between moments when pulling out your phone just feels like too much, you can just tap once and keep going. Plod automatically turns what you record into searchable notes, summaries and mind maps you can actually use later. Plod's also designed with privacy in mind, with enterprise grade standards including SOC2, HIPAA and GDPR compliance. Check it out at Plod AI TBRH. That's P L A U D AI TBRH and use code TBRH for 10% off. Customers don't think in channels and support teams shouldn't either. That's why Twilio helps businesses unify voice, messaging, chat and other channels into one continuous conversation, so customers can move from AI self service to a human agent without repeating themselves 15 times. Twilio combines conversational AI contextual customer data, and omnichannel communications to help teams automate routine support, route complex issues to the right agent, and give every agent the context they need to resolve issues faster. Businesses can turn AI investments into real CX outcomes by connecting AI to customer conversations, memory and action. Twilio's AI self service agents can handle common requests like order status, billing questions, account updates, and authentication while seamlessly escalating more complex issues to human agents with full context intact. Learn more@Twilio.comTB2 that's Twilio.comTB2 study and play
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the bubble Watch Markets are all over the place a bit today, but mostly down for tech. I wanted to Note that South Korea's tech heavy Copse index fell 10%, dragged down by SK Hynix and Samsung. STMicro and ASML also fell around 7%. Quoting CNBC, SpaceX shares also extended its sell off, moving 3% lower after falling 16% during Monday's regular session. A pullback in the wider tech sector dragged both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ Composite lower on Monday, with investors rotating out of the so called Magnificent 7 stocks. Amazon and Meta's declines extended on Tuesday, with shares of both companies shedding just over 0.7% despite the pressure building in global markets. On Tuesday, Tumor Hulik, CEO of Strategy Asset Managers, told CNBC Squawkbox Europe that he wasn't concerned about a looming catastrophe, noting that markets are very fluid right now. I don't think we're anywhere near some type of catastrophic failure in the markets. There's too much liquidity out there and the earnings momentum is very strong right now, he said. AI is going to continue to grow earnings for companies in years to come. When you have a capital expenditure in the trillions of dollars, it can throw valuations a little stratospheric for companies like SpaceX or even Anthropic, but but who's to say what's going to change the world with some of these companies and what they can do going forward? In a note on Tuesday morning, Wedbush's Dan Ives said the sell off presents an opportunity for investors. Clearly this downturn will cause selling pressure and white knuckles for tech stocks in the US this morning as investors worry the overheated copse sell off has a spillover impact on US Tech stocks, he said, noting that nervousness was being amplified by Micron's looming earnings report due on Wednesday. Ives manages Webbush's AI Revolution etf, with the fund's top holding including Micron, tsmc, ADM and Nvidia. Taking a step back, we continue to believe that in this market we will continue to go through a number of gut check moments in the tech trade as the AI revolution remains in the third inning. This morning is just another one of those moments, he said in Tuesday's note. End quote. ByteDance has unveiled Seed Dance 2.5, saying the AI video model can generate up to 30 second clips from up to 50 reference materials, up from just 12 reference materials with Seed Dance 2.0 quoting the decoder. Volcano Engine is ByteDance's cloud business, which offers the company's AI models as services for enterprises. The new model on Volcano Engine generates single video clips up to 30 seconds long without any post stitching, complete with scene changes and tempo shifts. It can process up to 50 additional inputs at once reference images, audio and more. Useful for film scenes with multiple characters. Users can also edit generated videos after the the fact while keeping the visual style and look intact. Meanwhile, Seed Dance 2.0 now supports native 4K with 10 bit color depth. Volcano Engine also announced the Daobao 2.1 Pro language model, the C Dream 5.0 Pro image model and the Seed Audio 1.0 audio model. According to the company, Daobao 2.1 Pro costs about 80% less than Claude Opus 4.6. End Quote Foreign. Today Meta says it is pausing its employee tracking program meant for training AI models after internal security issues expose sensitive data from employees laptops. Quoting Wired, Meta left potentially sensitive information collected from employee laptops accessible to anyone inside the company, according to an internal security notice seen by Wired and three current employees familiar with the issue. The data, which was collected as part of a divisive initiative to train artificial intelligence models, is believed to include keystrokes, mouse clicks and content displayed on the computer screens of Meta's US Employees. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton initially confirmed to Wired that the company is investigating the security issue as the story was being published. He added that Meta is pausing the data collection program indefinitely. We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards, and while while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate, clayton says. The security notice sent out Monday indicated that employee data across 45,000 hive tables has been exposed. Those tables included employee activities such as full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people and performance data, according to documents viewed by Wired. Some employees at Meta quickly seized on the security failure, saying in internal forums that it validated concerns they had raised raised when the company began tracking workers corporate laptops in April as part of a program known as the Model Capability Initiative. Comments about the incident posted on internal forums Monday included questions about how Meta's privacy reviews failed to prevent the breach and whether everyone whose data was potentially exposed will be allowed to attend a meeting going over what went wrong, according to posts seen by Wired. In one internal forum where staffers are known to trade jokes, an employee posted a meme from the office of the character Jim Halpert, holding a sign that reads 0 days since our last nonsense. Sources at Meta, who were not authorized to speak publicly, tell Wired the incident has now been marked as closed, meaning it was likely resolved in an internal post responding to employees questions on Monday, seen by Wired, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, said that the tracking program's implementation had fallen short of the standards outlined in its privacy review and that findings from the incident would be shared here. We had misconfigured ACL's access control lists and we need to understand how that happened, track down every data access and understand, bosworth wrote. A couple of months ago, Bosworth told employees concerned about potential data leaks that the tracking program is tightly controlled and uses the same protection standards, storage systems and access controls as other sensitive data sets, according to internal posts seen by Wired. Last month, more than 1,600 employees at the tech giant signed an internal petition protesting the laptop surveillance effort, warning that collecting this data introduces both security and regulatory risks for Meta, including the potential for breaches and unauthorized disclosure. The petitioners also expressed concerns with what they viewed as a lack of safeguards that Meta had put in place. One engineer also wrote a widely shared internal note, saying having their laptop screen scraped for training data without their consent felt like an invasion of privacy and amounted to exploitation. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.
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