Fed up with trying to keep their bikes from being stripped or stolen by Boston-area thieves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology entrepreneurs designed a city-proof bike. Fortified’s Invincible has a rust-proof aluminum frame and chain, puncture-resistant tires, and theft-protection features.
Fortified Bicycle chairman Slave Menn was an entrepreneurial student in MIT’s Sloan Business School MBA program looking for a worthy problem around which to build a business. Menn was inspired by a friend who was hit by a car that didn’t see him because his bike light had been stolen. This was a problem he and his friends faced in the city every day: how to keep a bicycle from getting trashed or stolen in the city. The result was Fortified Bicycle. Fortified started by selling theft-resistant accessories, and is now launching two models of the Invincible city bike.
A single-speed Invincible 1Speed with caliper brakes starts at $399. That’s the bike Fortified recommends for flat cities like New York and most of Boston. If you live in a hilly city, like Seattle or San Francisco, the Invincible 8Speed with eight Shimano gears and disk brakes starts at $649.
Both Invincible models have rust-proof frames and chains, puncture-resistant tires, weather-proof saddles, and a custom bolt system. To remove the seat, handlebars, wheels, or any of the optional accessories — including lights, fenders, and a bike rack — requires a special screwdriver that works with the custom bolts that hold everything together.
The lightweight aluminum frame makes it easier to carry your bike inside at home or work than most steel-framed bikes, but there is still a chance a determined thief could steal it, which is why the company offers one-, three-, and five-year theft protection plans. If your bike is stolen, report the theft to the police and alert Fortified. The company has staff that watches eBay and Craigslist for your area to see if your bike shows up on either site. If Fortified is not able to find your bike within one business day, you get a brand new bike for free, except for a shipping-and-handling fee. Fortified Theft Protection plans cost $99 for one year, $248 for three years, and $348 for five years.
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.