James Park and Eric Friedman, who co-founded Fitbit, have unveiled their new company Luffu's first product: the Luffu Link, a screenless band priced at $249.99 that tracks health data and doubles as a safety device for families. The LTE- and GPS-enabled band lets wearers log symptoms and moods by voice, share their location, and alert trusted contacts or request help even without a nearby phone. It's available for preorder now and will ship in the US in early 2027 for a retail price of $299.99.
A commentary piece argues that companies scaling successfully with AI focus on cutting out repetitive, friction-heavy work rather than layering on more software or hiring more staff. It uses the redesign of the London Underground map—which ditched geographic accuracy for clarity of purpose—as an analogy for how businesses should simplify processes instead of overcomplicating them with new tools.
HP has entered a global, multi-year agreement to license standard-essential WiFi patents from Huawei, the two companies confirmed Wednesday. HP described the deal as a routine patent licensing arrangement rather than a broader partnership, noting it followed a prior patent-pool agreement covering 2,000 wireless connectivity patents that Huawei helped found.
A new study found that people living within five miles of the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory report higher rates of autoimmune and endocrine disorders than the general population. The site, located outside Los Angeles, suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 and has since been the subject of long-running contamination concerns. Researchers say the elevated health reports suggest lingering effects from the decades-old incident.
Indian voice AI startup Ringg has secured a $10 million extension to its Series A from Peak XV Partners, bringing the round total to $15.5 million. The company, which processes 20 million call attempts monthly for clients like Cred, Flipkart, Practo and Policybazaar, is shifting from simple outbound calling toward complex workflows such as healthcare appointment booking and fintech KYC checks. Ringg is also expanding beyond phone calls into chat and WhatsApp channels, and automating browser-based support for clients like Shell.
A 24-year-old investor who built a reputation as a prescient forecaster of artificial intelligence trends drew billions of dollars in backing from prominent financial circles. His fund's fortunes reversed sharply, transforming him from a celebrated prodigy into an example of how quickly Wall Street enthusiasm can unravel.
Amazon announced it will close AWS Mechanical Turk, its 21-year-old crowdsourced task platform, effective September 30, 2026. The service once connected over 500,000 workers to small paid digital tasks like data labeling and transcription, work Jeff Bezos called 'artificial artificial intelligence.' Amazon said the closure follows an internal review of its programs and tools.
Chris Malone, who led OpenAI's data center strategy after joining from Meta and Google in March 2024, has left the company. OpenAI confirmed it recently restructured its infrastructure organization, shifting oversight so that Malone no longer reported to President Greg Brockman but instead to VP Sachin Katti before his exit. The company says several other executives, including Uday Ruddarraju, Brent Mayo and Spas Lazarov, remain in charge of its data center efforts.
Singer Dolly Parton has died at age 80, remembered for her philanthropic contributions to science alongside her music career. She provided early funding for Moderna's vaccine research and publicly received her own COVID-19 vaccination to counter public hesitancy, while her Imagination Library program continues distributing over three million books monthly to children worldwide.
A Nature.com page titled 'The best-managed industrial waste in history' was published, but the site returned only a browser-compatibility notice instead of the actual article content. No substantive details about the waste management case being discussed were available for review.
A study of more than 70,000 people published in Nature Medicine found that those who received the current Shingrix shingles vaccine, rather than an older formulation, had a reduced risk of heart disease and heart failure. Researchers compared recipients of the two vaccine types rather than vaccinated versus unvaccinated people, a design meant to avoid the bias seen in earlier studies where healthier people were more likely to get vaccinated.
Nature.com published a compilation summarizing five notable developments in nuclear-power research, though the underlying content was inaccessible due to browser compatibility restrictions. The page redirected visitors to a stripped-down, styleless version of the site rather than displaying the actual research summaries.
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