Who says jewelry is just for show? Giving a whole new meaning to the concept of an “accessory,” Mira and its line of smart jewelry have taken both the tech and the fashion world by storm since the firm first appeared on the scene last year. And now, at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, the female-centric company is introducing two new products to its gorgeous line — the Vivid Wellness Bracelet and the Mira Vivid Wellness Pendant.
Taking its cues from what it calls the “modern-minimalist trend dominating the fashion world,” Mira’s latest offerings are as sleek as they are understated. The bracelet, with a ribbon-esque design, provides a brand new home for Mira’s proprietary opal, which measures steps taken, distance traveled, elevation achieved, and calories burned.
The bracelet is the pinnacle of discretion — for those of us who don’t want to loudly announce that we’re tracking our activity, we can instead opt for this beautiful piece of jewelry that just so happens to be a health monitor as well. Available in two finishes, Rosé All Day and Heart of Gold, this bracelet proves that fashion and functionality are by no means mutually exclusive.
There’s also the smart pendant, which allows you to move away from the wrist as the prime location for activity tracking. Again, with its simple design, the pendant promises to adhere to any wardrobe or style, and will only enhance your look (while providing you with some information about your daily movement as well). Of course, both the bracelet and the necklace are compatible with the mobile app, which will now include an additional goal-setting feature so that women can keep tabs on what matters most.
With the vast majority of fitness trackers and wearables adhering to the same tried and tired formula of black rubber and rather bulky interfaces, Mira is a breath of fresh air. Designed for those who have no interest in sacrificing aesthetics, both the smart bracelet and the smart pendant are giving women new options for their health monitoring in 2016.
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.