This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, May 6th, SACE de Mayo, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. Today, Remarkable releases the Paper Pure, a $399 e-ink note-taking tablet. And most everyone seems to love it. Yeah, we got a lot of love in the show. We also have a lot of hate for browsers. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. Remarkable has released its successor to the Remarkable 2 called, as Sarah just said, the Paper Pure. It sits at the lower end of the current lineup. There's the Paper Pro, then there's the slightly smaller Paper Pro Move, and now we have the Paper Pure. It is a 10.3-inch e-ink tablet, same as the Remarkable 2, although slightly wider aspect ratio than the two. It can handle PDFs and e-books, comes with an active stylus, and they say they've improved the response rate when you're interacting with it. They've also improved the display contrast, same resolution though. Battery life estimated at three weeks on a charge, which is a little better as well. And it's lighter, 360 grams, which is about 40 grams lighter than the Remarkable 2. has security features designed to make it attractive to your corporate IT manager should you want to use it at work, has the ability to integrate your calendar, take secure meeting notes. There's a sync service that convert your cloud documents into a format suitable for using that stylus and annotating it. You can convert your handwritten notes to text and then there's a method for sharing that right into Slack. You can also share your sketches on Miro if you use that. The Remarkable Paper Pure starts at $399 or $50 more, $449, gets you the Marker Plus stylus. That one has eraser functions and a carrying case. You can order either one of those now for shipping in June. Sarah, as a Remarkable 2 owner, how do you feel about the Paper Pure? Now, so for anybody who's not totally familiar with this form factor, it's all designed to basically just let you do whatever with your hand. Hey, guys. You can just write whatever you want on it. And then it will convert it to text. I've done quite a few of these. Now, it does more than this. But the idea is that it's for people who their brains want to sketch, you know, they want to, you know, make a mood board, you know, they want to write stuff on the fly. And a lot of people feel like they learn better this way, and they're able to share things better this way. Okay. So this has always been a tool that I, as a person who doesn't even own a piece of paper or a pen, actually, I have paper now because I bought a printer recently, but for the most part, I'm pretty online. I don't use a lot of this stuff. I do find it to be very therapeutic for a variety of reasons. I don't know that this is the solution to somebody who's like, well, but I have the iPad Pro with a pen. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you want to save a little money, not even that much money, honestly, but a couple hundred bucks, you go with the remarkable. It's certainly going to save you battery life. You don't have to charge it as often. Oh, I mean, this thing will, I mean, it's got like three months of battery life. I also don't use it all day, every day. So your mileage may vary, but it also doesn't have a backlight. And a lot of people don't like e-ink for that reason. Yeah. It's like paper, right? Paper also does not have a backlight, famously. In the dark, it's not going to help you. Yeah, it's very similar in that way. I was not surprised, but I found it notable that this was one of the stories that was on the top of both Google. In fact, it was the very top of Google News today. And it was up there on TechMeme because it's not about AI. It's a very, dare I say, unremarkable product in many ways in that it's what you would expect if I told you there was a new e-ink tablet. But people seem to really like it and praise it. do. In fact, I pulled some, some friends of mine who are very much more sort of, uh, daily journalers and sketchers than I am. And I said, what do you, what do you think? And everyone was like, this is cool. I mean, besides the one guy who was like, no, iPad pro. Why would I get, why would I get that? One eye partisan in the bunch, but the rest liked it. Yeah. But, um, what, what remarkable has been very good at, and this is, you know, shout out to their marketing team is saying, we're not just online. You don't have a browser on this tablet. You actually kind of do if you want to hack around a little bit, which I did for a Live With It segment episode some years ago. You can do that. You can get library books on this, but it's really meant to basically be just, it's your post-it note and a pen. That's what it is. But it's smart enough to be able to then sync to your computer later. So everything you do is actually, I mean, there, there is internet connectivity, but the idea is this is your safe space. This is your, this is your stuff. You're not, you're not, you know, opening apps. You're not, you're not doing any of that. You're just writing down thoughts, um, or, you know, drawing things. And then later on, you come back to that at your computer or your office or whatever, and then you go from there. Yeah. It's a notebook. We call laptops notebooks computers sometimes, but this is literally a notebook. It's the size of a notebook at 10.3 inches. You write on it. Things that you write on it don't immediately go into the internet unless you want them to. I imagine that that is the attractiveness of it is it's got the benefits of electronics in it and, and connectivity. But without the distraction of a multi-purpose device, like an iPad. Well, and every few years we get a device that's designed to like help people disconnect. Right. It's like, it's the phone that only does one thing or, you know, and I feel like, uh, the remarkable, the remarkable too, which I have, I, I haven't played around, um, with the, uh, with the pure, but that's, it's the same idea. It's if you really want to say, okay, I do, you know, note-taking, I do it in one place. This is the part of my reign. Then later we convert it into things that help me connect with my team or, you know, otherwise, uh, you know, the, the, the, notes go somewhere else. That's, that's the idea. Not everybody wants that though. A lot of people are like, that's, you know, I just want an iPad or, you know, a tablet, or I want to be online at all times. So I get both sides. Yeah. And honestly, this is, you know, not every product has to be for everybody. The question is it like, will the remarkable sell the paper pure to every single person in the world? I don't think they expect that, but is it And it feels like enough people find this useful that these improvements, even though they're not, again, like crazy improvements, they are good. It's like, oh, faster response time, you know, better battery life, even though it was great before. These are evolutionary improvements but they are improvements that people who use these kinds of devices like And I guess there are enough people out there that like them that it gets a lot of attention So good for Remarkable It also very there I think a certain type of person who you know cares a lot about you know the type of pen you know the stylus And Remarkable is very good at that stuff. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, not everybody cares. You know, me, I'm like ballpoint, whatever. but um you know if you want to do calligraphy this is this is your jam for sure yeah very cool uh well $399 available now shipping in june if anybody is that type of person well dtns is uh hopefully your type of person uh we we are made possible by all of you listening right now we want to give a special thanks to neema saidi saidi rather ali sanjabi ab puppy and dale mokahe Thank you, every single one of you. There's more we need to know today. Let's get into the briefs. Let's do it. Google has modified its AI overviews in its search to place links right next to relevant text. Hovering over links now shows you the title of the page. If you integrate your subscription with Google, which is, you know, you would have to do that yourself, it will highlight links to sources that you actually subscribe to. Could be helpful. Responses will now include relevant public discussions like on Reddit, for example, and end with suggestions of where to go next. Yeah, it's interesting to watch people cover this one today because some people are really into the like, oh, expert sources from Reddit. Could that go wrong? Could that be great? I found the relevant text to be the most exciting thing for me is that when I see an AI answer, oftentimes I'm like, oh, that's a really good answer. But can you prove it? And sometimes the link is very easy to find. Sometimes it's not because it's in this little dropdown menu of five other links. And I'm like, which one is the fact that I'm looking for? So having them in line like that is going to be a big improvement for my use of this. How about you? You know, when AI Overviews first launched, I was sort of like, I don't know. Let's see how this goes. I wouldn't say I was against it, but I was skeptical. I use it all the time now. And I also use LLMs for questions and answers for other things as well. But yeah, AI overviews, I think, actually works quite well. But as you said, sometimes I read that and I'm like, sounds good. But is it just sounding good to me? Because that's what I wanted it to say? Where's the source? Which kind of goes back to like journalism 101. one. But yeah, I think what Google is doing is making this journalism 110. Yes, it's the next semester. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it because it's not a huge advance, but it does make it a little easier. Also, the integrating subscription thing, I think I might actually do. I'd forgotten they even had this where it's not a thing where you buy your subscription through Google. It's just validating it to say, hey, in my Google account, if you come across a, you know, the Verge article, I pay for the Verge. So highlight that. So I know that, oh, that's what I pay for. I won't. It's something I want to see. Yeah, exactly. And I didn't do it because I just haven't run into situations where I care, but maybe this is one of those situations where I should. How many subscriptions do you have? Me, none. The company? It has, I don't know, half dozen, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that many. Yeah, but you know, this becomes relevantly helpful, hopefully. Yeah, exactly. Relevantly helpful. Helpfully relevant as well. Speaking of relevant, helpful things, security researcher Alexander Hanf was trying to be relevant and helpful. He goes as that privacy guy on the internet and published an analysis showing that Google Chrome, the browser, downloads a four gigabyte generative model on your device, in his words, without notice or consent. A file called weights.bin, implying it's the weights for the model, is part of the Gemini Nano model, which is an on-device version of Gemini. Systems with qualifying hardware requirements get that file now as part of Chrome in a lot of situations. Hardware requirements for Nano are that you have to have more than 22 gigabytes of free disk space and a GPU with more than four gigabytes of VRAM. So if you don't have a good enough GPU or you don't have enough free disk space, it's not going to put this on your machine. Otherwise, it will. And it won't tell you it's doing it any more than it tells you it's doing any other kind of update other than I'm doing an update. Now, HOMF believes that in this case, that download might violate the EU's e-privacy directive rules on storing data on a user's device, as well as GDPR requirements around transparency. I don't know if that's true. We'll have to see if someone takes it to court to find out. But this is, to me, I'm curious what you think, Sarah, an update to Chrome. The weights in the model are not private information. They're not Google storing, like, tracking data. They are just the weights for the model. You can't have a model on your device without having weights for it to use. That's how models work. They look at the weights and say, ah, okay, these things are related to these things, and they spit out words, and that's how you get an answer to things. Having an on-device model in Chrome is a great thing because it means you don't have to send your data to Google in the cloud to get an answer. If the nano model is capable of it, You can just do it on your device. Four gigabytes, on the other hand, is a very large update. And I don't know that I adore the idea of Google saying like, yeah, it's just another update. It happens to be, you know, more than four times the size of most updates. And it's going to, you know, take up a tenth of your hard drive, depending on how big your hard drive it is. Probably smaller than that. But still, that's a lot of gigabytes to be putting in my browser. That's all I'm saying. So I have some questions. So the idea of, yeah, four gigabyte update for a browser is huge. That's not something that I would really blink at, you know, using my current Mac mini, which has a lot of storage on it. It's like, yeah, whatever, you know, whatever it is. Um, but good, good reminder to just sort of be like, well, why is it so big? And is this something that I can download? Um, beyond that, I'm not sure how much the idea of a generative model being part of that download disturbs me. I think Google could have just, you know, in the installation process been like, want this or no? Yeah. Yes or no. And then nobody would be complaining. Give me a checkbox even where it's like, oh, if you want to prevent it from being downloaded here. Because if you go and delete that file, it just comes back. There's no way to stop it from showing up other than deleting Chrome. And as companies do, they can always say, do you want to do this? Here's how it's going to improve your life in 1,000 different ways. Or just say no. But it still gives somebody the opportunity to say, well, yeah, yes. Or no, I don't want this. Um, and, and really this feels less like a privacy thing to me and more like a storage thing. Yeah, it is quite a lot of storage space. It's also AI. And right now everybody has a lot of emotions around AI. Yes. So I think that gets a lot of people's backup is like, you're pushing your AI on me. And if they don't want AI at all, they should have that choice in their browser. Um, I guess, you know, the fact is you do have a choice. You can go install Opera or Firefox or something else entirely But if you going to continue to use Chrome and a lot of people feel pressured like they have to use Chrome because certain things only work in Chrome Chromium browsers generally are pretty compatible though. Opera is a Chromium-based browser. So I feel like you do really have a choice. And I don't think what Google's doing here is particularly awful. I'm with you on that. It's a large update. And I think because it's AI, maybe just giving people a choice would be just a good thing to do. But I don't think this falls on the abusive side. And I doubt it violates EU's e-privacy directive rules. But we'll see what a court thinks. We will. Well, we can't get away from AI, Tom. So we got more news. Everybody wants to sell you one of those agents. Business Insider reports that Google is building a personal agent for Gemini, codenamed Remy. It's being tested on a staff version of Gemini and can integrate with Google services. You might expect to hear more on this at Google I.O., which is happening on May 19th, or at least kicks off then. In slightly related news, Google's browser agent called Project Mariner, which was shown off at last year's I.O., you might remember, was shut down on May 4th. Just Mariner did not Marin. Meanwhile, the information reports that Meta is building something it's calling Hatch, which would be a consumer-oriented alternative to OpenClaw, expected to be ready for internal testing by the end of June. Yeah, everybody wants to have their own OpenClaw that they can say, oh, this one's safe. You can use it with us. Remy is an interesting name for this, but otherwise, this is obviously superseding Project Meritor, which was only in the browser. And obviously, they want you to do things with the on-device nano model in your browser, not use a browser agent called Mariner. So yeah, I don't have a whole lot more to add to this other than I'm not surprised. And I eagerly anticipate all the other agents coming from the companies who have not announced them yet. Well, anytime something like, and you mentioned OpenClaw, anytime something like that really catches fire. Yeah. People are like, oh yeah, no, this really works for me. You know, this is my workflow now. And, you know, sharing all that online, everyone else is going to jump on board. Not saying that Google and Meta and other companies weren't already, you know, into it, but I, I would, I would, I would bet money that there are some teams in, in, uh, corporate work rooms, uh, you know, who were said like, you know what? Okay. This, this is now what you're doing all day, every day. Yeah. And open AI, I went and hired the creator of OpenClaw. And yesterday we were hearing rumors that they're going to do an agent on mobile and put out a phone next year, Ming-Chi Kuo saying that. So obviously they were like, let's get the actual OpenClaw guy to make an agent for us. And Codex, Codex is working well as an agent on Mac OS. A lot of people are very attracted to that as a less risky, less fiddly alternative to OpenClaw. So, yeah, this is a space rife with people willing to try to be the one that gets your attention. Indeed. Norwegian security researcher Tom Joran Sonstabiestroning discovered that Microsoft Edge loads all your saved passwords into memory in clear text. Clear text and security always makes me shudder, as it probably does you. However, it's worth noting here that other Chromium-based browsers do not work this way. This is simply a Microsoft Edge implementation. For example, Google's Chrome actively makes it difficult to extract saved passwords by reading process memory. They do some control of decryption and encryption so that you only get them when you need it. However, Microsoft does not consider this a vulnerability. And this has not been granted a CVE number because Microsoft says Edge does this by design. An attacker would need to have admin access to exploit this vulnerability. And at that point, you've got bigger problems than your passwords being in clear text in memory. It makes it a little easier for them to get it. But if they got admin access, they might be able to get it anyway. Now, Microsoft points out that a device would already be compromised if this were the case. and it is just balancing performance with security, saying this is going to make your browser work better and faster, and we don't think encrypting them or not storing them in clear text and memory would improve your security all that much. So you can have your own opinions about this, and obviously it's not a good look for Microsoft, which is under the gun for not being secure right now. It's perceived as not being good with security. but while I prefer the choice Google made, I don't think this is unreasonable. I don't either. At the same time, I think Microsoft has a difficult argument here saying, but it's faster. But so many people say, well, but it's less secure. But to say, well, this is by design and what are the chances that an attacker would even get your admin access and, you know, exploit this and you would be a victim of, you know, some sort of security measure. Um, that is sure for many of us, like probably would never happen, but it's not so much about the chances it's them saying if they have admin access, they already have access to all of this information, you know? So the fact that it's in clear text is kind of just a, it's a speed bump to have it encrypted, you know, but they're, they're probably going to get it anyway. So it's not making you that much more secure. It's a tough sell though. It is, especially when you're Microsoft, I think it'd be an easier sell for a different company, right? Yeah. Saying like, Hey, you know, we're just trying to make things faster for you. But yeah, Microsoft saying, no, no, no, it's fine. This probably won't happen to you. And, and you have better performance daily as a result. Okay. But you know, there, there's just too many people out there who were like, no, I want a more secure performance. Yeah. Well, let us know where you land on this. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Indeed. Well, we have big news, Tom. You actually already know this news. I do. But sharing it with everybody else. Live With It has a new home. You asked for it and we have answered. So if you want to get real product reviews from people who live with and use their gadgets, their services, a wide range of products. Check out Live With It if you haven't already. Lots of you have given us great feedback and we're really enjoying doing the show and we're going to keep it going. In fact, this week, Rich Stroffolino is telling us all about his sous vide kitchen solution. He picked up for a very low price. Yeah, a bit of a hack here, kitchen hack. Could it be right for you as well? Find Live With It episodes at our very brand new channel, youtube.com slash at livewithitshow. All right, let's get to those quick headlines that make you look smart. Let's do it. Valve released CAD files for the Steam controller shell under a Creative Commons license, which would make it easier for people to create their own accessories for the controller. Yeah, just for the outside, not the inside, but still pretty cool. I can't wait to see the mods come out of that. Android 16's May update is rolling out to Pixel devices, as it always does, including fixes for a lot of those display noise and blurring and white dots and all that stuff, as well as a fix for slow wireless charging. Speaking of Android, once again, Google will make Android announcements a week before Google I.O., the Android in the Android show, IO edition, which is taking place Tuesday May 12th at 10 a Pacific Xbox CEO Asha Sharma came over from the core AI team which made people worry that she might try to force more AI into Xbox Well, today, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced the co-pilot will be removed from both the Xbox consoles and the Xbox mobile apps. So there you go. I don't know what other AI companion is more hated than co-pilot. Maybe the most. It might be the most. Corning will open three new manufacturing plants in the U.S. dedicated to making fiber optics for NVIDIA. Ah, big news for Corning. Another one of those circular deals a little bit. Apple agreed to pay $250 million and admit no fault to settle a false advertising class action lawsuit over the marketing of Siri's AI features in 2024. for. And I can't wait to get the $6 or whatever it ends up being that I'll be able to get as a Siri. Are you part of the class action? I mean, I used Siri during that period. I assume I am. Me too. I want my $6. Or whatever. That's a coffee at this point. That's a coffee, I know. Or less than a gallon of gas. A gallon of gas. The US Supreme Court declined Apple's request to block a lower court order, finding Apple in contempt of the court's mandate to make changes to the App Store as a result of a lawsuit with Fortnite maker Epic. Yeah, that doesn't mean Apple is done with the challenge. It just means that they have to comply with Judge Gonzalez's orders going forward. Scientists from OpenAI, AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA all teamed up to publish a paper describing a network protocol called Multipath Reliable Connection. Fix this one in your brain, MRC. I have a feeling you may hear it here and there because it makes data centers more efficient, makes GPU clusters faster and more reliable, and allows you to get more out of a data center, which right now with the amount of compute everybody needs is a huge deal, which is why you have all of these different companies teaming up on it. Google's DeepMind will buy a stake in the online game EVE Online and train models on the game. Yeah, EVE Online players, you might be able to get a job doing some training for them. The Next Web reports that a London recycling firm faced with what is typically a 40% turnover of staff in the somewhat dangerous business of handling recycling has been training a humanoid robot to sort waste instead. I mean, I don't hate that. Yeah. It's taking a job a lot of people don't want, apparently, and is dangerous. Someone out there is going to be like, no, it was my favorite job ever. Well, they can keep it. And robots. Yeah, right. UK-based nonprofit Internet Matters surveyed 1,000 children about age verification and found that children, unsurprisingly, have a clear awareness on how to bypass age checks if necessary. Some children claim to have drawn facial hair, like a mustache, and successfully bypassed the checks. I would just caution people. Don't go around saying like all these age verification checks can be gotten passed because you by drawing a mustache on you because it didn't work all the time. And this is also self-reporting. So we don't really know how often it really did work. But it is pretty funny. I just I just want to say the kids, the kids are going to be ahead. They're going to find some way. If the if the drawing of the beard didn't work, they'll find another way. That's just the way it's going to be. Autonomous car company Nuro has received permission from the state of California to test its lucid gravity robo taxis on public roads later this year. Nuro has been doing this for a long time. They were one of the first ones to even do autonomous cars back in Singapore years and years ago. Hyundai released a video showing production-ready Atlas humanoid robots performing complex gymnastics, which other humanoid robots can't yet do, at least not well. Hyundai plans to deploy the robots in plants starting in 2028. So we're going to get Olympic medals and a lot of warehouse fun. Yeah, I know that this is just demonstrating the capabilities of the robots and they will not be doing the gymnastics in the Hyundai plants. But I kind of hope maybe they do. Well, it's sort of like, OK, so let's say you and I are in a plant and I don't know, something drops. And there's sort of no way that humanly we can pick up this thing and put it back where it's supposed to be. Right. Without hurting ourselves. Like, that's where the gymnastic stuff, like, it sounds like, okay, they're just doing, like, backflips. But it's stuff that humans can't do well. And it shows their flexibility and their sensitivity to picking things up and all that stuff. Yeah. Finally, Energizer announced a new line of coin batteries, like those used in watches. if you're an old person like me, or AirTags if you're a young person like me. The new Energizer coin batteries are called Ultimate Child Shield. They have a titanium alloy that prevents ingestion burns if swallowed because it reduces connectivity, so you don't get electricity moving around in your gut. And it also turns your mouth blue. So if somebody swallows it like a child or a dog or somebody, you'll be able to tell that it happened to get them medical care. I didn't realize that many people and dogs were swallowing battery. I mean, it doesn't have to be many for this to be something people don't want to happen. Right. Indeed. Indeed. And thank you for not calling me old, Tom. No, you're definitely the air tag generation. Well, for all the generations who are with us on the show, we like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, Rob has one about Jason and Rob Dunwood's discussion of AI slop in podcasting and books from Monday's show. Yeah, this is Rob Buggslife, if you've seen him comment on Patreon. Rob writes, my shared perspective on the books versus podcast saturation topic. For me, podcasts are more like a newspaper or a magazine. subsets of info or topics that are regularly released where a book is generally a finite topic where the work is front-loaded, published, then done. Both books and podcasts are being flooded by slop. And while an AI podcast might convey news headlines, well, I would never trust AI hosts the way I trust the DTNS crew, even if they were saying the same thing. I need to build that positive parasocial relationship to trust hosts. Oh, well, that's really nice. It is nice to hear. It's very nice to hear. And that's actually why we do all of this. And I think it's underrated sometimes when people fear or promote AI. It's like, yeah, you're not just getting a list of facts. It's the same reason people like to read columns. They want to hear it from somebody. They know like, okay, this person has done the research. I trust that they do this well. Versus an AI, which might be hallucinating it, right? It's that perspective. I mean, yeah, I have lots of my favorite writers for that exact reason is because you just can't. That comes from one brain, you know, or in our case on DTNS, it's like many brains, you know, but we all do this together. Yeah, exactly. So thank you, Rob Buggs Life, for that. Indeed. If you're thinking about something that we've touched on on today's show, you have the insight into a story that we might touch on in the future, do share it with us. We read every single email. Feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Rob for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You are the folks who keep us in business. So become a patron if you haven't already. Patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.
