When life really starts to get busy, it can be difficult to step away from it all and just relax. That’s where BrainTap Technologies comes in. For those people who don’t want to learn or train themselves to meditate, the new BrainTap headset is restful meditation done for you. Using a series of sounds and pulsing lights to distract your brain, BrainTap promises to be a shortcut to deep relaxation.
“If you get home and you’ve got a lot of noise around the house, you can’t really focus,” BrainTap Technologies’ Michael Porter told Digital Trends at CES. “We can shut all that down … and you can get back about your life.”
The Bluetooth-enabled headset is equipped with an LED visor and headphones that help shut out the rest of the world. To use the device, simply load an audio file using the BrainTap app (or download one from their website), place the headset and visor over your head, and close your eyes.
Ten guided visualization sessions are included with the headset via the BrainTap app, and more than 700 audio sessions in 43 categories can be accessed via the on-demand library. Some of the programs are created to specifically help with stress relief, insomnia, and pain management.
Before long you will begin to feel more relaxed, which can lead to healthier sleeping habits and a better quality of life. The BrainTap Headset is available for purchase on BrainTap’s website for $547.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.