Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme ride home for Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today OpenAI rolls out an 03 Pro model Android One UPS iOS with a quick release. So far, so good for the Launch of the Switch 2. What is Google doing with its headcount and is essentially a giant hologram the future of video calls. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech Foreign has debuted O3 Pro for ChatGPT Pro and team users and in its API costing $20 per 1 million input and $80 per 1 million output tokens. Enterprise and EDU will get access next week. Quoting TechCrunch, O3 Pro is also live in OpenAI's developer APIs as of this afternoon. In expert evaluations, reviewers consistently prefer O3 Pro over O3 in every tested category and especially in key domains like science, education, programming, business and writing help. OpenAI writes in a changelog. Reviewers also rated O3Pro consistently higher for clarity, comprehensiveness, instruction following and accuracy. O3Pro has access to tools, according to OpenAI, allowing it to search the web, analyze files, reason about visual inputs, use Python, personalize its responses, leveraging memory, and more. As a drawback, the model's responses typically take longer than O1 Pro to complete, according to OpenAI. O3 Pro has other limitations too. Temporary chats with The Model and ChatGPT are disabled for now, while OpenAI resolves a technical issue, O3Pro can't generate images and canvas. OpenAI's AI powered workspace feature isn't supported by O3Pro. But what is it like to use? Our friends over at Leighton Space have a hands on saying O3 Pro is much smarter than O3 and amazing at using tools. But the model requires a lot of context to run well, and without enough context it tends to overthink. The key I discovered was to not chat with it, instead treat it like a report generator, give it context, give it a goal and let it rip. And that's exactly how I use O3 today. But therein lies the problem with evaluating O3 Pro. It's smarter, much smarter. But in order to see that, you need to give it a lot more context. And I'm running out of context. There was no simple test or question I could ask it. That blew me away. But then I took a different approach. My co founder Alexis and I took the time to assemble a history of all our past planning meetings at Raindrop, all of our goals, even record voice memos, and then asked O3 Pro to come up with a plan. We were blown away. It spit out the exact kind of concrete plan and analysis I've always wanted an LLM to create, complete with target metrics, timelines, what to prioritize, and strict instructions on what to absolutely cut. The plan O3 gave us was plausible, reasonable, but the plan O3Pro gave us was specific and rooted enough that it actually changed how we are thinking about our future. This is hard to capture in an eval. O3 Pro feels very, very different from Opus and Gemini 2.5 Pro where Claude Opus feels big but never truly showed me a clear sign of its bigness. O3 Pro's takes are just better. It feels like a completely different playing field. OpenAI is really driving down this vertical RL path. Deep research codecs not just teaching models how to use tools, but how to reason about when to use them. The best ways to prompt reasoning models haven't changed. My guide on how to prompt 01 still stands. Context is everything. It's like feeding cookies to the Cookie Monster. It's a way of bootstrapping LLM memory, but actually targeted so it works well and the system prompt really matters. Models have actually become really malleable. So LLM harnesses that teach a model about its environment and its goals have outstanding size impact. It's this harness, a combination of model tools, memory and other methods that makes AI products actually good. What makes things like cursor just work most of the time? OpenAI also announced an 80% price drop for its O3 model and a Flex mode for synchronous processing that charges $5 for input and $20 for output per million tokens. In an essay on his personal blog, Sam Altman said intelligence and energy, the limiters on human progress, will be abundant in the 2000 and 30s, and superintelligence should be widely distributed. 2025 has seen the arrival of agents that can do real cognitive work. Writing computer code will never be the same. 2026 will likely see the arrival of systems that can figure out novel insights. 2027 may see the arrival of robots that can do tasks in the real world. A lot more people will be able to create software and art, but the world wants a lot more of both, and experts will probably still be better than Nov as they embrace the new tools. Generally speaking, the ability for one person to get much more done in 2030 than they could in 2020 will be a striking change, and one many people will figure out how to benefit from in the most important ways. The2030s will not be wildly different. People will still love their families, express their creativity, play games and swim in lakes, but in still very important ways. The2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before. We do not know how far beyond human level intelligence we can go, but we are about to find out. End quote. Maybe you're someone who's tired of iOS news. Well, I've got something for you. Google has rolled out Android 16 to Pixel phones with live lock screen notifications and debuts features including more AI editing in Google Photos In a broader update quoting CNET rolling out first to most supported Pixel phones, Android 16 lands months earlier than recent major versions, with a focus on productivity features and enhancements. These include live updates for tracking deliveries and rideshare cars, streamlined notifications, the ability to use desktop style windows when your phone's connected to a monitor, new device security features, native controls for hearing aids, and more. If you're waiting for your sushi to arrive or watching your rideshare slowly inch across town, Android 16 now offers live updates that are pinned to your lock screens so you don't have to keep opening an app to stay in the know. Also, notifications from the same app are now automatically grouped, reducing clutter in your lock screen from notification. Heavy apps like Gmail and Ring, A single toggle now bundles Google's toughest defenses, blocking dodgy websites, scam calls and even USB attacks while the phone is locked. Originally built for high risk users like journalists and politicians, advanced protection is free and available for everyone on Android 16. Tablet owners running Android 16 will get a desktop windowing mode later this year. The built in partnership with Samsung, it lets you float, snap or resize multiple app windows on your device like you would on a desktop, and Android 16 lays the groundwork for that end quote. Nintendo says it has sold three and a half million Switch 2 consoles globally in its first four days, a record for any of its hardware. Nintendo aims to sell 15 million units by March. Quoting Bloomb, the Japanese company has already sold more of the device than the roughly 2.7 million the original Switch managed during its first month in 2017. The numbers released by the company Wednesday bode well for its Target to sell 15 million units by March next year. They also reinforce analysts projections that Nintendo may be able to sell far more if it can pump up supply. The release of the new Switch was regarded as a watershed moment for the industry, steering business decisions by partners and competitors for years to come. At a time of thinning margins and exploding development budgets, a popular new console may galvanize the sector and provide a counterbalance to the increasing dominance of a handful of marquee live service games. There is very little margin for execution error for Ninty at this stage. The big issue right now is its high pricing, which is not a big deal in its first year when diehards want to get their hands on the console, said Amir Azurveda, a Japan equity strategist at Asymmetric Advisors. The pressure will be on it for it to reduce production costs to get the price down, and tariffs may complicate that. Catching up with Runway demand is the first major challenge Nintendo faces. The console is manufactured mainly in China by partners including Foxconn, exposing Nintendo to potential disruptions from a global trade war. President Shuntaro Furukawa has apologized after customers came away from lotteries for the switch to empty handed. The Kyoto based company has asked its partners to speed up production of the console. It's also secured agreements from Japanese online marketplace operators such as Rakuten to discourage resellers from taking advantage of the hardware scarcity. The pace is good, said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst with Toyo Securities. The key will be to maintain assembly capacity and increase production going forward. End Quote when you're starting off with something new, it seems like your to do list keeps growing every day with new tasks and that list can easily begin to overrun your life. Finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything can be such a game changer for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to my own resumewriters.com get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. Accelerate your content creation. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your product photography. And best yet, Shopify. Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com ride go to shopify.com rideshopify.com ride ever wonder what ChatGPT and Claude are actually doing with your conversations? Have you ever even stopped to think about that? We all know Alexa listens to us and recommends products based on our conversations. Meta retargets us based on our browsing and engagement history. But now, in this new AI era, there's a new privacy problem to consider. Think about what we tell these AI platforms. Our thoughts, our dreams, sensitive questions, business ideas. They take all this information, tie it to your identity and then sell it to various third parties and governments. ChatGPT literally has the former director of the NSA sitting on their board right now. That's why I've started using Venice AI, who is sponsoring today's podcast. Venice AI is a generative AI platform that is private and permissionless. They utilize leading open source AI models to deliver text, code and image generation to your web browser. There's no downloads, no installations of anything. Venice AI doesn't spy on you or censor the AI at all. Messages are encrypted and your conversation history is stored only in your browser. This is a cause I can get behind if you want to. Also, and you want to use AI without fear of handing over your most intimate thoughts to a corporation or the government, you can get 20% off a pro plan using my link at Venice AI Techmeme and code Techmeme. That's Venice AI, Techmeme and code TechmemE. Elon Musk says Tesla's robo taxi service will tentatively begin on June 22nd in Austin, te the first autonomous deliveries of a car to a customer's home on June 28. Quoting CNBC in a post on X, Musk indicated that he's flying from Los Angeles to Austin for the kickoff, which he previously said would occur sometime in June. When a commenter asked when public rides will start, Musk said the current plan is for June 22 and that the first driverless trip from the Tesla factory to a customer's house will take place on his birthday, June 28th. We are being super paranoid about safety so the date could shift, musk wrote. Earlier on Tuesday, Musk shared a video on X showing that Tesla was testing driverless vehicles on the roads of Austin without a human safety supervisor behind the wheel. The eight second clip showed the latest version of the Model Y suv, painted black with a white Robo taxi graffiti style logo painted on it, navigating an intersection and pausing to allow pedestrians to traverse a crosswalk. Musk recently told CNBC's David Faber that Tesla will start with a very small rollout, including about 10 to 20 of its robotaxis with a new unsupervised version of the company's FSD or full self driving technology installed. The test will involve the Model Y, not the futuristic looking cyber cab that Tesla plans to produce next year. Musk and Tesla will geofence the service, limiting where the Model Y taxis can initially operate and that employees will remotely monitor the fleet. End quote I'm starting to think that big things might be going on under the hood at Google. According to the information, Google has offered voluntary buyouts to U.S. staff across several key businesses and units, including the one housing its core search team and much of the Ads organization. Quote the move comes as Google's search business faces unprecedented threats from ChatGPT and following its loss in a US antitrust case that could hurt the company's ability to distribute its search product. Nick Fox, who runs the knowledge group, said in an email to his team that the buyouts were aimed at US Employees. Google also offered buyouts on Tuesday to US Employees in Core, which is the engineering team working on Google's underlying technical infrastructure as well as research, marketing and communications divisions, a Google spokesperson said. Earlier this year, Google also offered buyouts to the legal and finance team, the spokesperson said. All of these offers haven't been previously reported. The buyouts could be a prelude to to layoffs. In January, Google offered a similar voluntary buyout to members of the 20,000 person platform and devices team, which oversees Android, Chrome and Pixel. By April, Google laid off hundreds of employees in that unit, as the information previously reported, including 10% in its privacy Sandbox division, which was supposed to help usher in a more privacy safe vision of digital advertising. Google's piecemeal cuts this year differ from its approach in 2023, when it cut 12,000 employees, or 6% of staff. Google recently made a small number of cuts in its ads organ. At the end of May, Google laid off employees of its Ads Safety division, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Earlier in May, Google laid off around 200 employees in its Global business organization, which handles advertising, sales and other partnerships but sits within Chief business officer Philip Schindler's team. Google search is still Google's biggest business, contributing 56% to Google's total revenue in the first quarter. But it's growing slower than YouTube and Google's Cloud business. Those two divisions, notably, they didn't offer voluntary buyouts to workers on Tuesday, end quote finally today, from the interesting gadget file Is this the future of video calls? HP has unveiled Dimension, the first hardware built with Google's 3D video conferencing tech, featuring a 65 inch light field display. Launching later this year for $25,000 a pop. Quoting the Verge HP has become the first company to preview hardware built with Google Beam, the 3D video communication technology formerly known as Project Starline. It's launching the HP Dimension, a device that features a 65 inch light field display with six high speed cameras inside the bezel to create a true to life 3D video of your collar. Google first announced Project Starline's rebrand last month. At the time, Google said that it would let third party manufacturers starting with HP use its design framework to build devices with Beam. The HP Dimension is meant for enterprise use. It costs $24,999 and that doesn't even include the software needed to hold video calls, as users will need to purchase a Google Beam license separately to gain access to Zoom or Google Meet. HP and Google haven't said how much a license will cost yet. As my colleague Alex Heath pointed out in a demo of Google Beam, you don't need a headset, you don't need glasses or any kind of special equipment to see a colleague as if they're in the same room. Bo Wilder, HP's head of future customer experiences, said you don't need a special room e, but having a white background is best for an optimal experience. We're not trying to put a caricature in a small box across the table from you, wilder said. We want you to walk into the room and instantly make eye contact without even thinking about it. HP Dimension users will still be able to hold calls with people from other video conferencing platforms and devices, but their colleagues won't be able to see their Images projected in 3D and vice versa. Along with a series of built in cameras, the HP Dimension features adaptive lighting that adjusts to the environment, allowing users to see realistic shadows on facial features and natural skin tones. The HP Dimension pairs its light field display with spatial audio that Wilder said never separates the voice from the body. It comes with HP's new Polystudio A2 table mics as well as four speakers located behind its curved acoustically transparent mid wall for a direct path to the ears. The ultimate goal of Google Beam and it's manifested on HP Dimension is to feel like you're there, andrew Nartker, general manager of Google Beam, said during the briefing. You feel just like you're there at the table, working together. It's all meant to bring us together and ultimately feel like we're completely physically present. The HP Dimension will launch in the us, Canada, the uk, France, Germany and Japan later this year companies like Salesforce, Deloitte and NEC Corporation have already committed to bringing Google Beam into their offices. End quote. Hey, I know I've asked for this in the past, maybe three or four years ago, but can anyone out there help me with my Google AdWords account? Because all of the sudden I'm getting double conversions tracked for every sale and I can't figure out how to stop it. It should be a quick fix for someone to just go in there and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Happy to pay you. And once we get this fixed later in the summer, I have a new product that we're going to roll out that I could use some help setting up full AdWords conversion tracking and Google tag integration for so there could be a larger job later. If interested in giving me a hand on this double conversion thing right now. Again, I'm happy to pay you or happy to shout out something for you on the show someday. Get in touch@brianidehomefund.com thanks in advance.