Microsoft has confirmed that the company plans to launch portable music and media devices under the brand name Zune. Although details of any specific products are very sketchy, the announcement is being viewed by the industry as Microsoft finally stepping up to the plate to challenge the market dominance of Apple’s iPod portable music and video players. The move is a long time coming: Apple introduced the iPod in late 2001.
According to Microsoft, the first Zune device will be a music player sporting hard drive-based storage and, like the MusicGremlin’s Gremlin MG-1000, will offering Wi-Fi based connectivity and song purchasing. Microsoft plans to leverage the Zune’s wireless capabilities to communicate with other Zune users, share playlists, recommend tracks, and potentially share music with one another. Zune users will be able to exchange data with other Microsoft platforms such as the Xbox 360 and devices powered by Windows Mobile, although no specifics have been revealed.
Microsoft has not set a launch date for the Zune player, and has not revealed pricing information or how Zune and its related download service will interact with the company’s existing music offerings, including MSN Music and the new Urge partnership with MTV. Also unclear: Zune’s relationship to Microsoft’s PlaysForSure initiative, how the Zune will interact with non-Microsoft music services like Napster and Rhapsody, or whether songs purchased for the Zune will be transferrable to other devices. One thing is reasonable certain: the Zune will not be compatible with tunes purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, nor will protected tracks purchased for the Zune work with Apple’s iPod/iTunes platform.
Industry talk os positioning the Zune as Microsoft’s attempt to create an “iPod killer,” but some see the company’s Zune initiative as less of a threat to Apple as it is to companies making portable music players already trying to compete with the iPod. Those companies
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.