Despite a glut of unsold Spectacles last year, Snap Inc. is bringing back not one, but two new versions of its smart specs. A report from Cheddar reveals that this year Snap will be releasing a follow-up to the Spectacles that were initially released in late 2016. A more high-end pair of glasses sporting two cameras will ship next year. According to “people familiar with the matter,” Spectacles 2.0 should be out by fall.
Cheddar reports that its sources did not want their identities revealed.
The first wave of new specs are being incrementally updated, with new colors, water resistance, and improvements to performance.
The third-gen Spectacles will get a complete overhaul, GPS, and two new cameras to view videos with 3D depth. An aluminium frame, leather case, and more circular lens frames are also reportedly in the works. This pair will cost you $300 — compare this to the $130 price tag for the current Spectacles.
It wasn’t long ago that Snap reported a $40 million loss as a result of its Spectacles’ poor market performance, so you wonder why the company would have a second (and third) go at it. Is it possible that news of Apple, Amazon, Streye, and others releasing their own smart eyewear can at least partially be credited for Snap’s latest entry in the wearable market?
Snap’s hardware arm, Snap Lab, has not fared so well since the original Spectacles debut. A deal to buy Chinese drone maker Zero Zero fell flat the following year, adding more acrimony. Layoffs and trouble with the company brass followed.
Snap also sought to license its cameras to be placed in glasses from other companies, such as Luxottica and Warby Parker. Cheddar reported that it did not hear back from either of these companies.
Augmented reality has been a hot topic for some time now, and it is being implemented in various forms by Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Google, and numerous other companies. Snapchat itself has its own AR Lenses. Newer Spectacles may support these lenses in addition to Snapchat’s Bitmoji avatars.
Snap has the experience of going through a major setback with its first Spectacles release, and we can only watch and wait to see if it takes those lessons to heart the next time (and the next time) around.
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.