E-Ink Tailored to Your Eye - DTNS 5141

Plus, Microsoft wants to make its own suprintelligence and Apple is close to signing on Google’s Gemini for Siri.

Starring Tom Merritt, Huyen Tue Dao, and Dr Niki.

TOM: This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, November 6th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand.

HUYEN: Today Dr. Niki tells us about e-ink screens made specifically for the max resolution of the human eye, and Microsoft wants to make its own Superintelligence.

I’m Tom Merritt,
I’m Huyen Tue Dao.

TOM: Let’s start with what you need to know with the big story.

[[BIG STORY]]
[[SOLO story of the day. Basic details, monitor commentary, and sound when possible.]]

Microsoft Lays Out Ambitious AI Vision, Free From OpenAI - WSJ
Microsoft launches 'superintelligence' team targeting medical diagnosis to start
Microsoft superintelligence team promises to keep humans in charge | Semafor

TOM: Microsoft's CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, wrote a blog post and did an interview with Semafor, laying out Microsoft's strategy in light of its revised agreement with OpenAI.

Since July 2019, Microsoft has had exclusive access to OpenAI's newest models and has been the exclusive provider of cloud services. After last week's revised agreement, Microsoft still has exclusive access to new models until 2032 but does not get access to new hardware and is no longer the exclusive cloud provider to OpenAI.

It also freed up Microsoft to create the MAI superintelligence team. Suleyman said it “is going to become more humanlike, but it won’t have the property of experiencing suffering or pain itself, and therefore we shouldn’t over-empathize with it. We want to create types of systems that are aligned to human values by default. That means they are not designed to exceed and escape human control.”

Suleyman emphasized that Microsoft will not pursue conversational models or an "infinitely capable generalist." Instead, they hope to focus on superintelligent specialist models. He called it humanist superintelligence. He used improved battery storage or medical molecules as an example.

Healthcare is a priority, and it recently reached a partnership with Harvard Health. He said one tool Microsoft has developed can diagnose disease better than doctors.

[[DISCUSS]]

Microsoft built a fake marketplace to test AI agents — they failed in surprising ways | TechCrunch

TOM: In an example of a first test toward its promise to keep safety a priority as well, Microsoft, in collaboration with Arizona State University, released an open-source simulation environment called Magentic Marketplace. It is designed to test whether agents are vulnerable to manipulation. Initial research found ways to manipulate GPT-4o, GPT-5, and Gemini-2.5-Flash to get a customer's agent to buy products.

HUYEN: DTNS is made possible by you the listener. Thanks to
Kirk Steffensen
Miranda Janell
thatCharlieDude
And Rusty Dash

[[BREAK]]
[[PAUSE]]

TOM: There’s more we need to know today, let’s get to the briefs.

[[BRIEFS]]
[[3–5 more solo reads with sound to complete the day in tech news. These are informational with minor commentary.]]

Huawei Debuts Ultrathin iPhone Air Response Priced at $590 - Bloomberg
Motorola is releasing yet another low-cost mid-ranger with a 7,000mAh battery (and Android 16) - PhoneArena

HUYEN: A couple of interesting phone releases to note today. Huawei introduced the Mate 70 Air, a 7-inch phone that is 6.6mm thick and costs about $400 less than the iPhone Air, though it's more than a millimeter thicker. It also has a 6,500mAh battery. It ships in China Nov. 11.

Motorola has a mid-range Android 16 phone called the Moto G57 with a 7,000mAh battery, which can last more than two days on a single charge. The 6.72-inch phone sells in Europe for €279.

Apple Plans to Use 1.2 Trillion Parameter Google Gemini Model to Power New Siri - Bloomberg

TOM: Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has more inside info about Apple's deal to use Gemini to power Siri. Gurman now says the companies are finalizing the agreement and Apple will pay about $1 billion a year for the right to customize a 1.2 trillion parameter version of Gemini and run it on its own private cloud compute servers. Apple Intelligence uses a 150 billion-parameter Apple model now. The new system will use Gemini models for summarizing and planning while using Apple models for other features. Gurman also notes that in China, Apple is examining using models from Alibaba as a filter for Apple's own models.

IKEA announces new Matter-compatible smart home products

HUYEN: The slow march of the Matter standard, which promises to make all smart home products interoperable, continues with 21 new items from Ikea. It includes 11 smart bulbs, three motion sensors, and air, temp, and water sensors. There's also a smart plug and four remote controls. The new line arrives in January.

Job cuts in October hit highest level for the month in 22 years, Challenger says
New bipartisan bill would require companies to report AI job losses

TOM: Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates layoffs in the US reached 153,074 in October, up 175% from last year, and the highest monthly number since 2003. Challenger's numbers can be more volatile than government reports and do not show up in weekly jobless claim filings. Also, payroll processing firm ADP reported net growth of 42,000 jobs in October. Challenger says the job cuts came mostly in the tech sector, with consumer products and nonprofits also seeing sharp rises in layoffs. Challenger attributed it to continuing adjustments from the pandemic boom for tech, impacts of the US government shutdown on non-profits, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs. Challenger also noted the technological disruption of LLMs but did not have evidence of how much impact this technology has had. Meanwhile, two bipartisan US Senators introduced a bill to require companies to make a monthly report on how AI integration impacts hiring.

TOM: And finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news in the future.

Gemini Deep Research Can Now Access Google Workspace Data

HUYEN: Google's agentic Deep Research can now access Workspace accounts, including email, docs, and chat, to add more context to detailed reports.

The Foursquare founder's new app is an AI-powered 'DJ' for neighborhood updates

TOM: Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley has launched an app called BeeBot that turns on when you put in AirPods to occasionally give you audio snippets about friends, places, and events that are nearby.

Mastodon's latest software update brings quote posts to all server operators | TechCrunch

HUYEN: Mastodon is rolling out release 4.5, which supports Quote Posts for all server operators, native emoji support to the web interface, and improvements to admin and moderation tools.

Microsoft’s offer to 2.7 million Aussies
Microsoft Suffers Refund Glitch Amid ACCC Lawsuit - CX Today

TOM: Microsoft offered about 2.7 million Australian customers a refund to switch to lower-cost plans after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued the company for misleading customers about changes to their plans. And many consumers are reporting glitches in the refund system, as it seems to have attracted a lot of use.

Sony shares bias-busting benchmark for AI vision models • The Register

HUYEN: Sony announced a publicly available computer vision bias evaluation dataset called the Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (or "Fee-bee"), which has "10,318 consensually-sourced images of 1,981 unique subjects" from 81 countries.

Google plans AI data center on Australian outpost Christmas Island - DCD

TOM: Google and the Australian Department of Defence plan to build a data center on Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, with energy provided by a local mining company.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says China ‘will win’ AI race with US

HUYEN: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told The Financial Times, “China is going to win the AI race,” and blamed US and UK cynicism, implying that if Nvidia can't sell Blackwell chips to Chinese companies, those companies will catch up on hardware tech.

China Bans US Chips from State-Funded Data Centers, Reuters Says - Bloomberg

TOM: Chinese regulators issued guidance that state-funded data centers that are less than 30% complete must replace any non-Chinese AI chips with locally designed alternatives.

Exclusive | OpenAI Isn’t Yet Working Toward an IPO, CFO Says - WSJ

HUYEN: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, “IPO is not on the cards right now. We are continuing to get the company into a state of constantly stepping up into the scale we are at, so I don’t want to get wrapped around an IPO axle.”

Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports - Sherwood News

TOM: Reuters reports that Meta's internal documents show it estimated about 10% of its ad revenue came from scams and illegal goods but did not provide the staff to combat it fully, prioritizing resources in the regions with the largest fines.

Blue Origin's second New Glenn launch will carry real NASA satellites

HUYEN: Blue Origin will launch its New Glenn rockets on November 9th, this time carrying real payloads for NASA's Escapade twin satellites, which are headed to Mars.

Nova Launcher gets its second update in as many weeks - Android Authority

TOM: The Android Nova Launcher is not dead yet, releasing on Wednesday its second update since September, including bug fixes and stability improvements.

Google Play and YouTube Purchases No Longer Sync to Movies Anywhere Libraries

HUYEN: And finally, new purchases of Google Play and YouTube movies are no longer available through the Disney-run Movies Anywhere service that syncs purchases across services.

[[IF necessary. One sentence each]]

TOM: Those are the essentials for today. Let’s dive a little deeper.

[[SEGMENT A - FROM SCHEDULE]]

HUYEN: Eye-pixels! They’re pixels for your eyes! Dr. Nikki explains!

[[PROMO]]

TOM: If you have feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show, get in touch with us on the socials — @DTNSshow on X, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon. For TikTok and YouTube, you can find us at Daily Tech News Show.

[[BREAK]]
[[PAUSE]]

[[HELPING EACH OTHER UNDERSTAND]]
[[Short missives from people with experience. Could be written email or pre-recorded from the person.]]

HUYEN: We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today Mel has some skepticism about data centers in space.

TOM: Yes, Mel had many things to say in his email, and I promise Mel, I heard them all. But this part in particular I thought might be interesting to the audience:

“Datacenters on Earth generate massive amounts of heat, and ultimately dump that heat into water and/or the atmosphere. A datacenter in space will have neither of these, where radiative cooling is the only option.

As best as I can tell, the chips used in these datacenters will have to have some magical future efficiency tech, or else be so low powered that they'd be all but useless for the stated purpose—especially given the cost of launching and running satellites.

Maybe they have such chips, or some other solution, but any mention of heat is conspicuous in its absence. So next time this comes up, please remember to ask: ‘Whither the heat?’

Thanks for coming to my TED talks,
— Mel”

[[DISCUSS]]

HUYEN: What are you thinking about? Got some insight into a story? Share it with us — feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com

TOM: Thanks to Dr. Niki and Mel for contributing to today’s show. And thank YOU for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron atPatreon.com/dtns.