Tech accessory manufacturer ZAGG revealed a wireless version of its Flex Arc headphones at CES Wednesday. The Flex Arc combines Bluetooth wireless headphones and wireless external speakers into a single, wearable package.
Similar to many current wireless earbud sets, the Flex Arc stores the Bluetooth receiver in a collar-style frame that wraps around the back of the user’s neck. Unlike most manufacturers, which try do everything they can to minimize the size and weight of what they see as a necessary evil, Zagg puts the Flex Arc collar to good use by adding external speakers on either side of the frame. If sharing your music with others isn’t your thing, a built-in microphone allows the speakers to function as a hands-free headset for taking calls from a paired smartphone.
Aesthetically, the Flex Arc also adds a novel design tweak to the traditional Bluetooth earbud headset; the cords connecting the earpieces to the collar can retract into a housing on both ends of the collar, minimizing clutter when stored and removing dangling earpieces from the sides when the Flex Arc is in speaker mode. As with many Bluetooth headsets, the frame also features basic control buttons for changing song volume or taking a call on either side of the neck.
According to ZAGG, the Flex Arc lasts for up to eight hours of “music and travel time,” but did not specify how using key features, such as the speakers and microphone, might impact battery life.
The headset intends to come in three color combinations, black with gold buttons, black with gunmetal gray buttons, and gunmetal gray with gold buttons.
As one might expect, the wireless version of the Flex Arc headphones is quite costly compared to past models. The ZAGG Flex Arc Bluetooth headset will cost $99.99.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
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.