Anthropic Releases Its 'Hybrid Reasoning' AI Model - DTNSB 4963
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This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other understand. Today, Ron Richards and Tim Stevens tell us about the virtualization of pinball in Part 3, the final part of our three-part series. And we got some stuff from you to talk about, too. Thank you, John. That's right. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Tom Merritt. Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.

Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, what the company calls the first hybrid AI reasoning model. Hybrid, we'll get to that in a second, which can give shorter answers in real time, as well as more elaborate and thought out answers on demand. The query box that you'll be using now has a separate thinking mode section for users to pick between.

So you've got two options there. There's normal mode, which gives users the standard shorter context, resulting in quick responses to queries, kind of what you're used to. Then there's extended, which allows users to direct cloud to take its time in how it quotes.

It, quote, thinks, you know, I like to put that in quotes because it's not really thinking. We like to humanize these things, but there you go, through the query that you put there. Anthropics says its reasoning mode has been optimized for real-world tasks, things like coding, agentic action, that sort of stuff.

Only paid users will have access to the reasoning feature set that I was just talking about. Free users, you still have access to Cloud 3.7 Sonnet, but without those extended reasoning features offered up to you. And Anthropic, by the way, does report that version 3.7 outperforms its predecessor 3.5. That's expected, I would say, but good to know.

3.7 Sonnet also includes a visible scratch pad. And this is essentially like we've seen this with some of the other models. We can certainly talk about that. But this demonstrates the thinking process in real time. Users will actually see a step-by-step thought process in an attached window in the experience.

Now, Anthropic also shared that it tested its new model on the Game Boy version of Pokemon Red as a way to demonstrate its expanded ability to reason through difficult problems. The previous version, Clot 3.0 Sonnet, performed pretty poorly in a similar test, while 3.7 Sonnet battled three Pokemon gym leaders and won. Hey, congratulations.

And finally, Anthropic also released a new agentic coding tool called CloudCode. As a research preview, this new tool gives developers the ability to trigger tasks directly from the terminal. And CloudCode is available on a first-come, first-served basis for a small amount of users to begin with.

So reasoning models that kind of show you step-by-step what they're thinking and follow through. On one of my other podcasts, AI Inside, Jeff Jarvis likes to think or believes that these step-by-step things are all performative and not actually –

it isn't very authentic to what's actually happening behind the scenes. I'm curious to know what you think about that, Tom, does that, as a user, how do you feel about that? As usual, Jeff Jarvis, very smart guy. Uh, that's pretty close to what I was about to say myself. Uh, I, I,

I like to refer to these as chain of thought rather than reasoning for exactly the reason that you were saying is we tend to anthropomorphize them and chain of thought kind of distances you. And I think it gives you a better idea of the fact that it's, it's taking the LLM model of being a really good predictive engine and double checking it. Right. It's, it's adding almost a little bit of machine learning in there to say like, well, we'll wait, you know, or reinforcement learning, you know, is this right? Is this right? Let me iterate on this. What you see is,

in these chain of thought models when it's showing you how its thinking process is actually it taking the behind the scenes stuff and running it through an LLM and summarizing it for you. Right? So it isn't what's happening behind the scenes. It's another interpretation by the model of how to explain what's happening behind the scenes. I don't think it's actually worthless or anything, but it is kind of performative. I'm with you on that. On

On the other hand, the idea of combining these, and I know you still have to choose, do you want it to go faster? Do you want it to use chain of thought? But getting us closer to the time where we can just put in our query and the model itself can decide, the way it does the chain of thought, it could decide like, oh, this one should go to the fast model. Oh, this one should go to the chain of thought model. This one should go to the code model that's optimized, the agentic model, whatever, whatever, right? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think even Anthropic has stated at some point, I can't remember where I read that today, but that that is the ultimate goal. That right now, users have the ability to choose between the two. Eventually, hopefully, they get it to the point to where it can do exactly what you're saying. Recognize what is the right direction for this particular query and go from there.

Yeah, I mean, I've used some of these other systems. It seems like right now we're going through a big agentic push in AI. That's a real hot topic. We're also going through a big reasoning push in AI. And I don't know, when I interact with some of these reasoning models, as they put it, I find that the output is –

I don't know if it's more like, I don't know if I trust it because of the time that's taken. Like, I guess, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like when I put in a query into an LLM and I hit enter and it has the response for me in like 0.3 seconds. Uh-huh.

It takes 10, 20, 30 seconds to get there. And it shows me a little bit of the process on the way to it. I don't know. There's a little bit more trust, I think, that maybe that invites in the user, whether it's real or not. When a student hands in a test really fast and the teacher's like, no.

Oh, did you actually think this through? Exactly. It's that same kind of feeling there. I'm totally with you. Obviously, agentic is the next big thing that these companies are wanting to impress people with, and there's some impressive stuff coming. I think...

A more impressive thing for an end user is going to be that moment when you don't have to choose a model. And I know Anthropic has beaten OpenAI to the punch with this kind of feature.

But OpenAI has also said, we are not going to have 4.5. We're just going to move towards you put in the query, we'll decide what model. And I kind of expect a little leapfrog game here of OpenAI's next feature is going to be better than this one that Anthropic is putting out. And then Anthropic will put one out. Maybe Mistral will put one out and DeepSeek, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But we are going to see the interface start to improve pretty rapidly, I bet.

Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I'm here for it. Like, I think the more I use the modern kind of the modern versions of these interfaces and kind of see the see results out of it on the other side that are less interesting.

I don't want to say inhuman that I could that I like. Let me just put it this way. I read something last week on on the podcast on AI inside that I didn't realize until the end was actually written by an LLM. And usually my AI dar is pretty good.

And I was captivated by what I was reading. And then at the end, it says, oh, it was written as an output, I think, of deep research or something along those lines from OpenAI. And I was impressed by the fact that that happened. And –

I don't know. Some of these reasoning models, I wonder if we're getting closer and closer to that point or that realization for more and more people. More reliability, higher reliability. The Economist podcast did a similar thing recently where they were doing a report. And at one point, the woman stopped and said, by the way, that last sentence was done by a model simulating my voice, right? And I was like, oh, yeah, I didn't even notice. Didn't even cross your mind. Didn't even clock it. Yeah.

Well, DTNS is up to this point made possible by human listeners. So far, we can say 100% human listeners. But, you know, we welcome any agentic AIs that would like to support us as well. For now, though, big thanks to Chris Allen, Mark Gibson, Reed Fishler, and brand new patrons. Everybody welcome in Punnies, Ronald, Mitchell, and Matthew. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you can become one of them at patreon.com slash DTNS. Picture this. You're in the garage, hands covered in grease, just finished up tuning your engine with a part you found on eBay. And you realize, you know what?

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Start shopping at thrivemarket.com slash podcast for 30% off your first order and a free gift. All right. There's always more that we need to know, and there definitely is today. Let's get to the briefs. Perplexity teased its upcoming agentic search browser. This one's called Comet. In a crass attempt to appeal to my high school sports leanings, because we were the Greenville Comets. Go Comets. They posted a short promo video to their ex-account, Comet.

Company linked to a waitlist signup page for gaining beta access to the browser. Perplexity says that users can gain quicker access by sharing comment on social media and tagging perplexity. That's clever. No additional information about capabilities, though, or expected release date or really any details at all. Yeah. But, you know, perplexity makes a good search engine. So one assumes they wouldn't make a entirely vapid browser.

Yeah, for sure. I've been using Perplexity for more than a year at this point, and I still opt to use it in a browser even though I have the app installed on my Mac OS. So it'll be interesting once Comet comes out to see if I actually use it over Chrome. I don't know. I was going to say, do you use the Perplexity search browser most of the time, half the time? No.

I more and more, I open up perplexity when I'm doing your first choice. Yeah. It's yeah. The more you, the more I use it, the more I find reasons to want to use it over what I'm used to using. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.

DeepSeek has reopened access to its API after almost three weeks of deactivation. That was a move that was meant to address capacity strains due to overwhelming interest in the AI model. Customers can once again top up credits, but DeepSeek did say that its server resources will continue to see constraints during peak hours.

All right. This is not a story about a large language model or generative model. It's a security story. Sorry. Samsung's secure folder feature has a flaw that exposes hidden photos and videos when accessed through a work profile on the device. The flaw was demonstrated by our good friend, Michelle Ramon over on Android Authority. He noted that...

Encrypting the secure folder resolves the issue. However, Android Authority also discovered that the apps within secure folder can be revealed through the device's permission manager, regardless of whether the secure folder is encrypted or not. That is a separate flaw that treats secure folder as a work profile, which limits its control over the permission controller.

Yeah. A little confusing, but not good. You know, when you're marketing a secure folder, you want it to be secure. So just be careful there. Look out for those mitigations. You might want to be careful what you put there and maybe turn off profiles if you don't need it, all that kind of stuff. There you go.

There you go. And we're back to AI. Chegg, an education and homework technology company, is suing Alphabet in federal court, claiming Google's AI summaries in search have a direct and harmful effect on its traffic, its revenue, and its workforce. Chegg saw its non-subscriber traffic drop 49% year over year as of this January. They're attributing much of that drop to Google's, quote, hollowed-out information ecosystem, and

Ouch. Chegg stock has dropped 87% year over year to a record low of $1.01 per share. Not looking good for Chegg. That's why they're mad. Okay, I will continue the battle to bring you non-AI stories despite Jason's best efforts. I'm sorry. But none of mine are fun. Well, this one might be fun. It depends on how you look at it. Microsoft is testing ad-supported desktop versions of its Office Suite apps.

These versions currently are available only for Windows, but you get Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for free. Now, the apps do have some limits, so you don't get all the advanced features that the paid version would get, but you can edit documents.

and sort of save them. I'll get to that in a second. A panel on the right side of the application displays the ads. So you get some banner ads over there. There's also a prompt to subscribe to Microsoft 365, and then that would remove the ads and give you all the advanced features. Some users of the ad-supported version have noted that you can only save your document to OneDrive.

while saving locally is restricted to those with a Microsoft 365 subscription, which seems a little excessive. I was all into this, like, yeah, I limit the features until I pay. Sure, fine. But not letting me save to my own hard drive and forcing me to OneDrive, where you do get free space...

But then you have to download it back to your – anyway, Microsoft does offer free use of much of its Office suite on the web already. So if you were confused, this is not the web versions. This is desktop versions. Right, right. So once you save to OneDrive, then you can still download from OneDrive to your desktop. You could even sync OneDrive to a folder on your desktop.

Oh, boy. So that's why it just – I'm like, that just seems silly, but okay. Fine. That is silly. That's why we need to talk about nothing but AI today, Tom. Yeah, I think you made a compelling point. Yeah.

Over 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, have released a silent album in protest of the UK government's plan to allow companies to use copyright-protected work without direct permission for training AI models. The album, titled, quote, Is This What We Want?,

is meant to symbolize the potential loss of income and livelihood for the artists if those exemptions to copyright law are indeed enacted. The silent recordings, by the way, include empty recording spaces and studios. So they set up a recording inside of these empty studios and just recorded dead air, basically. And profits of the album will be donated to the Help Musicians charity. Yeah, we're going to talk about this a little more on DTNS Live later.

Where I will try not to make the same joke again that do they owe royalties to John Cage for this? Indeed. Yeah. I wonder. Really good question. It's a total ripoff. Was it three minutes? Is it 3.30 or 3.31? 3.30 something. I can't remember. But somewhere around there. Not a whole hour. That's for sure.

True. That's true. This is innovative in that way. Also, the UK put out a proposal for consultation with three potential solutions to this and their preferred solution, which is the one they are expressing their opinion on, which is we don't like your preferred solution. The preferred solution is to say you will.

That companies would be able to use anything for training unless the artist opts out. They would create a system for everyone to say, we are going to reserve our work. And it's whenever you ask for opt-out instead of opt-in, people get upset. So I'm not sure. If you're a Kindle owner, today is your last day to download your purchased eBooks using the download and transfer via USB tool for local backup.

You may remember we told you about this last week. Amazon announced the feature would disappear for good on February 26th with no official word why, though they recently began to move their e-book library to the KFX format, which is easier for them to put DRM on. Amazon had already removed the tool from its 2024 Kindle lineup, so this move only effectively removes it for everyone who didn't have the most recent ones. So if you got a Kindle, do it now if that matters to you.

Adobe released a new Photoshop app for iPhone with many of the same tools found in the desktop version. Of course, not all of them because the desktop version is a total beast. And this is an iPhone app. The app integrates with Photoshop on the web to allow for cross-device syncing and management. The new app is available today with, you guessed it, an Android version coming later this year.

Sorry, man. So just as we got Michelle to give us the details on the OnePlus Watch 3 on Monday's episode, because the OnePlus Watch 3 was supposed to launch today, Tuesday, February 25th, that watch has now been delayed until, and I quote, sometime in April. Why? A typo. It's as if I was put in charge of OnePlus Watch 3. Apparently, below the watch face, it says...

MEDA in China, M-E-D-A, instead of MADE in China, M-A-D-E. If you return the watch, you can get a full refund. OnePlus is like, no questions asked. We will swap this out. Or you can just keep it as a collectible. Now, Jason, I know you have one. Which are you going to do, return or keep?

I mean, I'm staring at Meta right now with my two eyeballs, and I think it works for me. You like it? I'm not trading this sucker in. No, it's like getting the misprint baseball card, right? Totally, totally. I mean, we often joke on Android Faithful about the clock, like set the clock back. How many days since OnePlus last had a marketing failure? And so I guess on tonight's show, we'll be setting the clock to zero again.

Yeah. I can't wait to hear what decision everyone on Android Faithful has meta. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Good one. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper in the ongoing stories and follow up. In the third and final part of our discussion with Ron Richards and Tim Stevens about pinball, they're going to take us through the amazing world of pinball virtualization, which is bringing old games back and a little bit of new controversy to the scene.

Now, I know a lot of people probably want to go play pinball games now after hearing you guys talk about this, but they can't. Right. They don't have one. Maybe they're far from one of these museums. They're not going to be traveling. And you guys were telling me a little bit about the virtual pinball scene that you can get into just from your computer. Yeah.

I, my, my first impression was like, oh, but the pinball purists must not like that. But it sounds like it's, everybody's like, no, no, that's a, that's a great entry point. Well, it depends on who you talk to. Yeah. Yes, for sure. Opinions are mixed for sure. I, I think in general, everyone agrees that they can be a really great way to learn some of these more complicated games because a modern game like Godzilla, like D&D, there's a ton of different things going on and different modes that you need to unlock. And if you're doing that at, you know, 75 cents or a dollar a pop, you're never really going to figure that game out. So, um,

But ultimately, like you said, Tom, a lot of these games are just really hard to find. And a lot of them are, you know, it's just impractical. And so if you want to experience a given game, it's a great way to do it. But the scene is it's semi-underground, semi-supported. There are certainly some licensed games that are available through various pinball emulators. A lot of them are a little bit more like kind of the ROM scene in video games where it's kind of maybe semi-legal, but just because no one's actually actively suing them. Certainly there are a lot of different ways to do it.

starting at, you know, the basics of running an emulator on your computer and playing things that way all the way up to, you can buy full on virtual pinball machines that basically have a big vertically oriented display instead of the actual play field. And it's actually in a full pinball cabinet. And some of them even have haptics in there to make it feel a little bit more like you're playing pinball. Um,

I think for me, the, the joy of playing pinball is the mechanical action. The fact that nothing ever reacts the same way. Uh, but for sure it is a luxury to have one of these tables at home, uh, machines, excuse me, I keep saying table. And I know that that's a, definitely not a good thing to say, uh, to have a machine like that at home is a luxury item for sure. And so I think that, you know, I think everyone needs to be somewhat, um, accepting of the fact that not everyone can do that, but there are certainly a number of promotions out there who would say that it's,

blasphemy to ever play a virtual pinball machine. Yeah. And it's, and it's really interesting system you mentioned. Cause like how I learned a lot of the rules for the games of the eighties and nineties were on like the pinball arcade app, right. Which is a license, which is a licensed, um, you know, you can download it in, uh, for your tablet or iPad or whatever it might be. Um, and it's got, uh,

you know, kind of ported over versions of those classic games. And they've really done a great job with getting the physics down. So you can, you know, like a big thing in pinball is called nudging where you actually physically move the machine to move the ball. And you can, they kind of, it's not perfect, but they do emulate that by, you know, you kind of put a little pressure on the accelerometer and it nudges the machine and that sort of thing. But it has been a great way to learn, but it doesn't replace the, the, the, the haptic, you know, in-person feeling of the mechanics and the physics of a pinball machine. But again,

in working at score, but what we found was fascinating was the underground virtual pinball community or V pins, as I called, which Tim, as you mentioned, was more kind of more on the unlicensed, you know, kind of ROM side of things is just fascinating because not only are they, uh,

as you mentioned, Tim, they're, they're, you know, you're able to create a pinball machine with displays in a, in a wood box, you know, and simulate the whole experience of being in a pinball, having a pinball machine, but with a computer and monitors, you know, kind of driving it. And that way, instead of spending $10,000 to have one pinball machine, you can spend a

few thousand dollars and have every pinball machine, right? So I see the attractiveness for somebody who's, you know, kind of amateur or, you know, is curious about it or just wants it to augment their, you know, kind of their Hallmark Gator game room. But what's fascinating about the folks in the VPN community is that from my, at least from my research, they outnumber the physical pinball players by a lot

these days because there's no barrier to entry. Um, and they've really taken it upon themselves, not only to port over the old classic games that we all love and improve the physics and make the best version possible, but they're creating new games. Um, uh, so for example, there's a, there's a SpongeBob virtual pinball game out there that someone created that is like a huge hit in the VPN community. It's not licensed. Please, Nickelodeon, don't go after them. They're very cool. Um,

But like, it's one of the biggest hits in the VPN community and it's completely grassroots. It's completely, you know, these folks are just tackling it and it's another way of expressing a love for this type of game, which I love to see personally. And Scorebit does work with VPNs. We were able to connect that so people can keep track of their scores on virtual pinball because they asked us for it. And that was what was so cool is that they're like, hey, somebody came to us and they said, can I implement your guys' SDK in my virtual pinball? And we're like,

And then next thing you know, we saw an influx of users coming from it. And it's just really cool to see. And, you know, neither one is exactly the same as the other. And they both have their pros and cons. And ultimately, it's whatever makes you happy as long as you're playing pinball.

There's also an interesting hybrid approach that's developing. There's a company called Multimorphic that's released a pinball machine called the P3, which is basically, it's kind of like one of these virtual pinball machines, but it's actually built within the play field of a pinball machine. And then you can basically buy add-on games that change the upper play field. So you basically get half of a different pinball machine with each new game that you buy. So you have one cabinet, which is persistent, but then you can buy different games that you can play on that cabinet with some kind of

relatively minor modifications as you go from one to the next. You couldn't do, you know, one minute, play one thing and the next minute play another, but with, you know, a half an hour or an hour worth of work, you can convert from one game to another, which, you know, saves a lot of floor space and a lot of money as well. They've got licensed titles. They just did a princess bride. They've got one that's a weird owl theme. It's kind of an interesting way. If you've only got room for one machine, if you don't want to be dropping, you know, 10 grand each on these things, you can buy one machine and then kind of cycle through as you get bored with one thing.

So it was an interesting hybrid approach trying to bring the digital and the physical play of pinball together into one medium. Well, thank you both for increasing my knowledge of pinball by like 2000% just now. It really is. It just said I was at Indus when I was at Indus last month, someone asked me, they said, do you think that, you know, the majority of pinball players are tech people because of the, you know, because of the technology from it. And,

what's fascinating is that on one hand, yes, a lot of us that come from tech are fascinated by this stuff. We want to get our hands dirty. We want to get in it. But what's so great about pinball, the pinball community is that as many people that I've met through pinball that are into tech, I've met mechanics and nurses and social workers and teachers. And like, you know, it is, it is truly an American, uh, you know, available to anyone type of hobby. And yes, there's a

portion of us tech nerds who love it because we want to take it apart and figure out how it works and rebuild it. But there's so many other people who just want to play the game and have fun. Well, Tim Stevens, if folks want to follow more of what you do beyond just pinball, where should they go?

Yeah, I'm timstephens.substack.com. If you want to check out my newsletter, I'm Tim Stephens on most platforms, including YouTube. In fact, I've got a video of the rebuild that we did of that Comet pinball machine, which is for sale, by the way, if anybody's interested. You can check that out on YouTube. And yeah, I'm in various social platforms as they arise and as they fall.

Yes, indeed. As they do more and more often these days. That's Tim Stevens with a V, by the way, if anybody needs to know. Ron, where can folks find more about Scorbit and everything else you do? Yeah. So just go to scorbit.io. That's our website.

and there you can find links and information about the Scorbitron device and links to download our mobile app. And we're on social media. Most often it's at Scorbit Pinball, like on Instagram and things like that. And then for me, I'm at RonXO across the universe of social media. And then every Tuesday, you can find me here on the Daily Tech News Show, YouTube and Twitch channels, doing Android Faithful, talking about the world of smartphones and mobile devices and fun stuff with the crew over there. Fantastic. Go do that as well. Thanks, you both, for chatting with me. Thank you. Thank you, Tom.

Well, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? I love that topic, by the way. That's so cool. Pinball virtualization is so sweet. So I would vote for that. But one way for you to let us know what you want to hear is our subreddit. Submit stories, vote on them at reddit.com slash r slash Daily Tech News Show.

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Yeah, John emailed us with a pair of questions. First, just listened to DTNS4958 and heard that Timu avoids customs by shipping lower than $800 items into the country, meaning the United States. Very helpful. Then I got confused again when you said that the business model is pooling orders and having mom and pop stores, which may even be in someone's living room, ship the individual items.

doesn't this require a box of materials worth more than $800 to cross a border from the article Chinese diaspora in the U S to operate family warehouses? Yes, it's reshipping, right? So I get why this is confusing and it's a great question, John, they are still sending the packages in individual boxes, but they can send them all to one place. And then the warehouse people reship them all.

I imagine in some cases they might be able to package $801 spoons together and then the reshipper can break those up. So there's lots of ways to keep below that $800 minimum and send to the reshippers. But yeah, it is something that...

They have to tweak for different situations. And they're still ordering multiples from one manufacturer, right? So they're able to get like a thousand things from one manufacturer and then break them up into smaller packages.

The second question, I was listening to the interview with Brian Brushwood and wanted to see and learn more about the $250 PTZ cameras. And while porn is often the driving tech behind video, much like the commenter you read live, our church is using this cheap video equipment to our advantage. I'd love to have a $250 camera in our setup. Alas, most of the ones I read about are $2,000. Can you link me to the video of that conversation?

Yes, we've got a YouTube link in our show notes to that conversation, as well as a link directly to the OBSBOT camera on Amazon. Thank you, John.

Very nice. Thank you to John, of course, for contributing. Thank you to Ron Richards and Tim Stevens as well. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. The show is made possible by our patrons at patreon.com slash DTNS. DTNS has a live version called DTNS Live on YouTube and Twitch. You can find details on that and so much more at dailytechnewsshow.com. We'll talk to you tomorrow. The DTNS family of podcasts.

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