This week at CES 2017, actor and humorist Nick Offerman stopped by the Digital Trends broadcast booth with Alex Ho from American Greetings to talk with Digital Trends’ Rick Stella and Greg Nibler about a new communications product line they were about to reveal for times when text messages just don’t have enough emotional impact.
Offerman started off the interview by saying that being behind the desk in the show booth reminded him of The Muppet Show, where puppeteers were under the raised stage with monitors so they could see what their respective puppets were doing on the stage.
Nibler mentioned that he’s a big fan of Offerman’s woodworking videos, and asked if this was his first CES. Offerman said he came to CES this year for the first time because he’s helping launch a new line of communications technology with American Greetings. They invited him to CES to help with the big reveal because his vibe fits with American Greetings.
Offerman then showed two pieces in presentation boxes: a line of tech-related greeting cards and a No. 2 pencil. Of the pencil, Offerman said it is cordless, compatible across all interfaces, doesn’t need batteries, and won’t spread viruses. Amid all the new technology, handwritten greeting cards never go out of style, he said. The new cards are tech-focused — for example, there’s a card with a pound sign so you can fill in your own hashtag.
The point about handwritten cards, Offerman said, is they’re much better than plain text messages.
“Now you can imagine,” Offerman said, “if I spent a great night with my wife, and I sent her a text that says, ‘Megan, thanks for the handjob.’ A card is better. If I send her a card that says, ‘Thanks for the most profound sexual experience of our relationship,’ that’s much better than just thanking her for a handjob.”
Nibler asked what Offerman thought about Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, and he said when Alexa can help with table saws, he’ll be interested. He also pointed out that American Greetings does have a drone card.
Someone watching the interview on YouTube suggested that Alexa could give wood facts, but Offerman said, “I know all wood facts.” He further expressed his belief that people should have as many hand skills as possible. He mentioned that he loves the potential of Alexa helping with wax rings when changing toilets.
Ho said that the new line of cards Offerman is helping to introduce are “tech messages for different purposes,” and that the hashtag for the line of cards is #devicelikenoother.
As the interview ended, Offerman said that later tonight he and his wife would be rehearsing ‘The Summer of 69 with No Apostrophe,’ and that @nick_offerman is “my Twitter moniker, my handle.”
Digital Trends is live all week at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. Check out our continuing coverage live on YouTube, Facebook, #DTces, and DigitalTrends.com/ces/.
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.