There’s Silicon Valley in San Francisco and Silicon Alley in New York City, but tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, Portland’s Silicon Forest draws its own oddball collection of makers, tinkerers and visionaries. In our new video series, Got it Made, join host Ezra Cimino-Hurt as he meets some of the unique people who marry cutting edge tech with innovative ideas in the city “where young people go to retire.” And believe us, they’re doing Portland proud.
Meet Larry Christopher Regis of Green Century. He calls himself a garbageman, but really, more of a “Star Wars garbageman.” That’s because his job consists of combing through all the electronics that you’ve decided you no longer want. The team at Green Century spends its days recycling and refurbishing electronics, and describes their “office” as a sort of high-tech junkyard. After all, the company says, “most computers and computer related items are still working and may meet the needs of many people,” so if it ain’t broke, why throw it away completely?
Today, Regis tells us, “We’re obsoleting electronics faster than ever.” For example, he notes, whereas the lifespan of a phone was 24 months just a few years ago, today, it’s closer to 12. And this high turnover rate leads to a whole lot of discarded electronics, from cellphones to laptops to, well, dildos. “You name it, we’ve seen it,” Regis said. Even cellphones used by the FBI in terrorist negotiations have found their way to this particular recycling plant in southwest Portland.
“We triage everything as it comes in,” Regis tells us, in order to determine whether or not a product can be reused. After all, Green Century believes in keeping items alive for as long as possible.
So the next time you’re thinking about doing away with that old tablet or PC, consider giving it a second chance at life at Green Century.
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.