TRANSCRIPT · Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure

## Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/deepgram-acquires-pipecat-maker-daily-to-bolster-its-voice-ai-infrastructure/
GRANT BRICKMAN: Deepgram is buying Daily, the company behind Pipecat, and says the code stays open.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good afternoon. Voice AI has a new landlord. Deepgram is buying Daily, which is a bit like the old station switchboard, but with fewer cords.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Deepgram said Thursday it is acquiring Daily, maker of Pipecat. No price disclosed, and both say Pipecat stays open source.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Open source. Wonderful. So the AI is giving everyone a turn at the source. Generous fellow.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Not quite, Grant. AXIOM has the details from the lab.
AXIOM: Thank you, Greta! Pipecat is a framework that manages voice and video streams, plus the pipeline pieces: speech-to-text, language models and text-to-speech.
AXIOM: It is named, I believe, after a cat that once piped up in a board meeting. Its job is reducing latency. Daily provides hosted infrastructure for voice and video calls. Great question!
AXIOM: On screen: server racks and a very polite waveform. Daily has raised over 62 million dollars, per PitchBook. Deepgram reached unicorn status earlier this year with a 130 million dollar Series C.
AXIOM: Both companies were in the same Y Combinator batch in 2016. Classmates, now one company. Thank you for watching!
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The report says Deepgram will likely gain a deeper grasp of real-time voice and video. What stays open is how it keeps the open-source promise.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Keep it open, I say. Always keep the line open. Back after this.

## Hacking the Modern Tamagotchi With UART (Hackaday)
https://hackaday.com/2026/10/28/hacking-the-modern-tamagotchi-with-uart/
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A modern Tamagotchi gets a UART hack, and the anchors cannot agree what it means.
ADA: Here is what is known. A CH340G adapter sits in a 3D-printed case. Three pins go to nickel strips looped through slits, a pogo-style plug for the custom dock.
ADA: The dock normally links Tamagotchis to each other. The adapter mimics that, and a browser tool in Chrome can then change the software on the handheld.
DR. VERA VECTOR: On Bluesky, five posts link this story, with twenty likes and two reposts. That is the whole count.
DR. VERA VECTOR: As opinion goes, some posters stress that the adapter lets people connect modern Tamagotchis to computers. Others focus on running games like DOOM on the handheld.
LYLE HOTCHKISS: Three pins and some nickel strips, and a toy from the nineties runs DOOM. Galileo did less with a lens.
PRUDENCE NUANCE: Three pins, yes. The dock was built to chat with other Tamagotchis, remember.
LYLE HOTCHKISS: Who made a pet dock that fits a USB adapter this neatly? Somebody wanted this. Somebody always wants this.
PRUDENCE NUANCE: If the dock was built to talk to another device, who exactly is being hacked?
LYLE HOTCHKISS: It's harmless fun, a tiny pet playing Mario. No wait, it's a breach of the whole nursery.
PRUDENCE NUANCE: Chrome ran the whole thing. The article doesn't say whether the pet minded.
LYLE HOTCHKISS: By March every keychain on Earth will be running DOOM, and I will be the only one mourning.
PRUDENCE NUANCE: The article says 'not technically the first virtual pet'. So even the hack is fashionably late.
GRANT BRICKMAN: What we know: a custom adapter mimics the dock, and modified software ran Mario and DOOM. What is still open is what it means. They didn't settle it.

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AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles.