Google is sending a tiny AI data center to space, Revolut is piloting facial recognition at store checkouts in the UK, and Google added creepy avatars to Gemini 3.8 live's agents

0:00This episode is brought to you by Quince. Shaking off that summer routine and getting back into things means you don't have time to worry about what to wear. You've got kids to get ready for school, planning that needs to get done for the next quarter, or whatever else is on your plate heading into fall. But Quince has your back. You see, they make creating a stylish functional wardrobe easy with timeless, versatile pieces. And it's all high quality, too, without the insane brand markup you see at other companies. Now that's because Quince works directly with ethical factories. So they pass those savings to you. Now that the weather's cooling off, I love wearing my Protect Golf pants I picked up from Quince because now that falls are coming, it's time to ditch the shorts and get pants up. I love these pants, folks, because they look so stylish and are incredibly comfy. You should try them if you want to look good while feeling good. And you know, I found it's really easy to mix and match their pieces. I mean, I can wear those same Protect Golf pants with just about any shirt or sweater combo. Or take their cashmere sweater. It can go with either a pair of their jeans or chinos. Or lounge pants.

1:00Quince also has an impressive selection of home goods, like quality bed linens and towels, or furniture for dorm rooms. Also made with the same quality and care that goes into their clothing, by the way. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash and get it next. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash and get it next. Flowing ad bunched on metrics that look great. Till the CFO sees them, that's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bullspend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign terms and conditions apply.

2:03Google is sending a teensy tiny AI data center to space. Revolut is piloting facial recognition at store checkouts in the UK. And Google added creepy avatars to Gemini 3.8 lives agents. It's Friday, September 25th and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in the sphere of tech this morning from Engage. Google's project Suncatcher, which ultimately aims to put large AI installations into low Earth orbit is preparing for a milestone event. The company will be sending a teensy tiny AI data center into space to see how it reacts to the harsh conditions. That's according to a report by the New York Times. A satellite named MVP will be aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set to launch on October 1,

3:08where it will be placed into orbit. Now, this is not a full data center in the conventional sense. It's four specialized computer chips called Tensor processing units, which combined offer the power of a single server in a data center. Solar panels will supply just one kilowatt of power to juice the chips, which is equivalent to the energy needed to run a hairdryer. Google says this will be enough to test the hardware against the harsh conditions of space. The company plans to let the satellite answer simple AI queries for a year, though it will orbit Earth for six years before it burns up during a descent into the atmosphere. These chips have undergone a battery of tests to simulate the void of space, including getting blasted with large amounts of radiation at Crocker nuclear laboratory. Radiation can seriously mess with computer chips, causing something called bit flips. This essentially flips the binary code from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.

4:10What's the solution to bit flips? Google is taking the Trident True PC method. It plans on restarting the chips when they act up. There's also a proprietary cooling system in place that uses layers of conductive material to expel heat into space, though it only works for around 15 minutes before the chips have to be turned off to cool down. The initial experiments at Crocker reportedly went well enough to take the next step, which is shooting the chips into the great beyond. But this does not mean that we are particularly close to having actual AI data centers in space. There are additional engineering problems to consider. There's the radiation and that whole bit flip thing, which seems extremely finicky with four chips, let alone thousands. Cosmic rays are an issue as they are actual physical particles traveling quickly through space that could punch through and actually melt semiconductor junctions. Scaling up the cooling system looks to be incredibly difficult.

5:13Despite those challenges, though, Google plans on scaling this project up. It wants to launch to similar satellites next year with the eventual goal of launching 80 satellites that will fly in close formation to better process AI queries. It's also looking into building a much larger satellite around the size of a football field. The company has not indicated how much money it is pouring into that endeavor. Revolute is trialing a new facial recognition system in the UK that could be convenience, but also controversial. The company says it's pay with smile system is the UK's first in-store facial recon system and has no processing fees for merchants. It's only being offered at select kiss the hippo coffee locations in London to start with. Pay with smile will run on Revolute Register, the company's new hospitality point of sale hardware system. It's a two screen system designed to combine payments, banking and floor operations

6:19for merchants. Once customers are enrolled, it uses biometric authentication data to verify the user's identity against selfies registered when the customer signed up. Revolute keeps and processes all personal data entirely within their own proprietary application environment, so says the company, and does not share it. Facial embeddings used to complete transactions are immediately deleted after a sale is confirmed and not kept in store by merchants. Pay with smile is not the first facial recognition payment system, and even the name is not that unique. China's alley pay introduced a system called Smile to Pay back in 2017 at Hong Kong KFCs, though it did not move outside of China. Another Chinese tech giant Tencent also unveiled a facial payment system called FrogPro back in 2019. Revolute said the new system is designed to reduce payment friction that can cause lost sales, but it is bound to be controversial given the public's general

7:22distrust of facial recognition technology. If you are a Revolute customer in the UK, you can sign up and try it between now in September 26th at Kiss the Hippo Cafes and Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Soho. Last week, Google launched Gemini 3.8 Live and Live extended thinking models touting them as the company's most advanced Live Dialogue models yet. The idea it said was to give developers and enterprises building blocks for reliable production-ready voice agents. It also made speaking back to Gemini more natural, so users can do complex tasks with voice commands. Now Google has added video to that formula with Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar. It pairs near real-time visual presence to the Live Dialogue models, creating an experience that listens, sees and speaks with a dynamic visual persona. In a nutshell, these are avatars designed to do things

8:27like sales support and customer service, so you may be interacting with them in the near future. In several videos in the blog, Google shows both realistic and cartoon-like avatars. They can do things like precise lip syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turntaking. Using them, the company says, will enable natural multimodal conversations by allowing the avatars to communicate using facial expressions while also looking, listening, and speaking. The avatars are backed by Gemini's advanced reasoning, allowing Live Avatar to trigger tool calls and fetch data in the background while continuing an active dialogue. Google will offer a library of diverse preset avatars or organizations can customize their own from high-quality reference images to preserve reference likeness, brand styling, or character identity. Those are only available through Enterprise Allow listing. The Live Avatar's are also built with strict safeguards designed to respect identity and keep AI-generated content transparent

9:32with each one watermarked using Google's Synth ID. Live Avatar is designed strictly for Google's Gemini Enterprise customers, but you may see the results some day soon in the form of customer service or sales avatars appearing on your computer or phone screen. Based on what Google has shown so far and people's distaste for AI Slop, they may not be universally popular. Thanks for listening, there's a lot more tech news at Engagit.com, this episode featured journalism from Laurence Bonk and Steve Dent. Enjoy your weekend, I'll be back on Monday with more tech news from Engagit.