Who Should Get the Galaxy XR Headset - DTNS 5130

Plus, famous people protest superintelligence, and GM brings Gemini into the car.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, and Jason Howell.

TOM: This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other understand.

SARAH: Today Jason Howell got his hands on with the new Samsung Galaxy XR headset. He’ll tell us who it is for. If anyone.

I’m Tom Merritt,

I’m Sarah Lane.

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.]]

"(156) Galaxy XR’s hidden message about the future of smartglasses - YouTube"
"Samsung's Galaxy XR Headset Costs $1,800, Undercutting Apple's Vision Pro - Bloomberg"
"Samsung Galaxy XR: Everything you need to know"

"Watch out, Meta: Samsung just confirmed its smart glasses plans (with some spicy hints) | ZDNET"    

TOM: Samsung announced its version of the Apple Vision Pro, and Jason Howell has had a chance to play with it already. So we chatted about what it is and what he thinks of it.

TOM: The Galaxy XR uses gesture control, can connect to a PC to use SteamLink or just work as a VR headset. From what Jason said there and how interoperable it is, I feel like it’s a lot more compelling than the Vision Pro, but still. Sarah, what’s your first impression?

[[DISCUSS]]

SARAH: DTNS is made possible by you the listener. Thanks to
Carmine Bailey
Chris Beneteau
Jeffrey Zylks
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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.]]

"GM plans to launch eyes-off driving, Google AI, other tech by 2028"
"GM's under-the-hood overhaul puts AI and automated driving at the center | TechCrunch"

SARAH: At GM's software event, the company announced plans for new features coming to its vehicles over the next three years. Starting with select 2026 models and all new models after that, GM will include Google's Gemini to let you talk naturally to your car. GM plans to build its own custom assistant in the years to come, but didn't share a timeline for that.

An advanced driver-assistance system or ADAS, that will let drivers take their eyes off the road, will first come to the Cadillac Escalade IQ EV in 2028, before expanding to other models. It will run on an Nvidia Drive AGX Thor chip. The system will use Lidar and multiple other sensors with a new unified computer core that uses three aggregators to receive data and send commands. GM says this will result in 10 times more OTA software update capacity, 1,000 times more internal bandwidth for faster responses, and 35 times more AI performance.

And starting in 2026, GM will offer an "Energy Home System" that includes bidirectional vehicle charging and a stationary home battery. You can charge your car from the battery or use your car's battery to power the home. Leasing of the system will start with all-electric vehicle owners before expanding to others.

"Statement on Superintelligence"
"Hundreds of public figures including 'AI godfathers' urge ‘superintelligence’ ban"

TOM: More than 1,337 people have signed a “Statement on Superintelligence that calls for a prohibition on its development until there is a broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in. The statement raises concerns about human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks, and even potential human extinction. The first few signatures are from computer scientists, starting with Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton, and deep learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio. Hinton, Bengio, and Yann LeCun jointly received the Turing Award in 2018 for their work on deep learning. LeCun is more optimistic about AI. Following Bengio and Hinton on the list is Director of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at Berkeley, Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

"YouTube will help you quit watching Shorts | The Verge"
"YouTube is rolling out likeness detection tool to combat deepfakes"

SARAH: YouTube has added a couple of new features.

First, for users, you can now turn on a setting that sets a time limit on how long you can scroll through YouTube Shorts. When you get to the limit you set, scrolling is paused, and YouTube delivers a notification that you've reached your limit for the day. You can, of course, dismiss the notification and keep scrolling.

For creators, YouTube is offering something called Likeness Detection. If you're in the YouTube Partner Program, you can upload a government ID and a video of yourself to verify your identity. Then you'll provide source material for the system to use to identify video that has you in it. If someone uses a video generator to make a fake version of you, without your consent, the system will flag it, and you can request that it be removed.

"Google claims ‘quantum advantage’ that promises drug discovery breakthroughs"
"The Quantum Echoes algorithm breakthrough"

TOM: Google has once again claimed to demonstrate quantum advantage in a quantum computer. That’s a term for when a quantum computer can do something better than a classical computer. Theoretically, there are a lot of things quantum computers can do better, but demonstrating it in a working device has proved more difficult. Google scientists published a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday describing an algorithm called “Quantum Echoes” running on a quantum chip that simulated the way atoms interact and other examples of quantum mechanics in nature. The algorithm ran 13,000 times faster on the quantum system than on a classical system. They were able to replicate the results on a second quantum computer, something they had not been able to do in previous examples of quantum advantage. The scientists did not claim the algorithm had practical uses, but believe the techniques could be applied to algorithms that do. A second paper described how to apply the technique for nuclear magnetic resonance, though that system did not work faster than a classical system.

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

"iPhone Air orders slashed to almost 'end of production' level: Nikkei"

SARAH: Nikkei's supply chain sources say Apple has cut orders for the iPhone Air parts to 10% of what they were in September, levels normally seen near the end of production.

"Apple’s New Vision Pro Is Made in Vietnam in Latest China Shift - Bloomberg"

TOM: Labels on packaging for the new Apple Vision Pro with an M5 chip indicate it was assembled in Vietnam, unlike the original Vision Pro, which was assembled in China.

"China's Baidu to test robotaxis in Switzerland in race for Europe"

SARAH: Baidu's Apollo Go unit will test a fully autonomous taxi service in Switzerland starting in December, with the goal to launch the service to the public in partnership with public transit company PostBus in Q1 2027.

"Netflix (NFLX) earnings Q3 2025"

TOM: Netflix revenue grew 17% on the year, thanks in part to its best ad sales quarter yet, though the company missed on profit, due to a tax dispute in Brazil.

"Meta's Alexandr Wang reorgs superintelligence lab"

SARAH: Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, told employees in a memo that the company will cut about 600 jobs from its FAIR AI research lab, as it staffs up its TBD Lab, though it believes most of them will be able to find other jobs within Meta.

"Hackers exploit 34 zero-days on first day of Pwn2Own Ireland"

TOM: Hackers at Pwn2Own Ireland exploited 34 unique zero-day vulnerabilities, collecting $522,500 in cash and making multiple devices more secure in the process.

"Tinder will require new users in the US to verify their identity with a selfie | TechCrunch"

SARAH: Tinder announced Wednesday it is expanding its Face Check system that requires new users of the dating app to verify their identity with a video selfie that is checked against the profile picture.

[[PROMO]]

TOM: We do live streams! Live With It premieres today with Dan Campos talking about his Rode wireless mic! Catch them by becoming a subscriber at youtube.com/dailytechnewsshow.

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

SARAH: We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today Jay reports on his use case for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas browser

TOM: Jay wrote: I learned from this show about the Atlas browser and immediately had a use case. I've been experimenting with Codex alongside Cursor and Copilot...But one thing that always bugged me is that none of these tools could look at the results of their work on-screen. They can review the code, better than I can at time, and run "curl" to get a peak at the actual HTML, but they can't execute JavaScript and they can't "look" at a screen the way a human could. So it was always a challenge to describe what I was seeing to the agent(s) in a way that helped them produce the kinds of changes I was asking for.

But with Agent I can open the pages in the browser and then ask Atlas to help me describe what I'm seeing or even help me diagnose why I'm not seeing what I expect. Then I can feed that into Codex, with some tweaks usually, and get better results more quickly and with less token usage.

One interesting thing that I've discovered already is that Atlas is doing something slightly different with colors than Chrome does, even though they are both based on Chromium. And of course I asked Agent to explain why that was ... and it did a pretty good job of telling me!

I won't be using it as a daily driver, but I've already found it pretty useful for some stuff I do every day.

[[DISCUSS]]

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

TOM: Thanks to Jason Howell and Jay 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