Latest news with #Pins
Engadget
22-05-2025
- Business
- Engadget
OpenAI's first device with Jony Ive reportedly won't be a phone or a wearable
The first device OpenAI is putting out with Jony Ive won't be a phone or a wearable and may not even have a screen at all, according to The Wall Street Journal . OpenAI chief Sam Altman reportedly talked about the company's plans to employees after announcing that it has purchased Ive's startup called io. The Journal said Altman told employees that they have "the chance to do the biggest thing [they've] ever done as a company." Altman and Ive gave out clues for what the company's first device could be: They said it will be fully aware of its environment and the user's activities, that it will unobtrusive and could either be carried around in one's pocket or placed on a desk. The executives also believe that it's bound to become one of people's "core" devices after a laptop and a phone. According to the Journal , it won't be a phone and that one of Ive's and Altman's goals is to wean people off screens, which means it most likely wouldn't come with a display. Altman reportedly said that it won't be a pair of glasses, and Ive wasn't keen on building a product users can wear in the first place. Whatever the device is, they intend on guarding specifics until it's time to release it in order to prevent their competitors from copying it. They're hoping to launch their new AI device late next year and are hoping to ship 100 million units "faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before." Ive's team, the Journal said, has been talking to vendors that can mass produce the device over the past four months. OpenAI apparently started working with Ive's startup a year-and-a-half ago. The original plan was to have Ive's company build a product that uses OpenAI's technology, but they realized that it could become the primary way users will interact with OpenAI's generative AI models. And that is why OpenAI ended up acquiring the startup founded by Apple's former chief design officer for $6.5 billion. We'll have to wait and see whether the combination of Ive's design and OpenAI's tech is compelling enough to convince people to buy yet another device from a new category. A company called Humane, for instance, tried and failed to get people to purchase the Ai Pin, which it marketed "as a tiny replacement for smartphones." In February, the company disconnected all the Pins it had sold, leaving customers without access to all of its features. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
House GOP overwhelmingly votes to impose Medicaid work requirements
Pins urge people to "Protect Medicaid" at an April 1, 2025 rally. In particular, attendees opposed Senate Bill 2, which would impose work requirements on certain Medicaid enrollees. (Whitney Downard/Indiana Capital Chronicle) The Republican supermajority voting bloc in the Indiana House approved Medicaid work requirements on Tuesday, though such a program change will require federal approval before it can go into effect. It moved on a 66-28 vote, mostly along party lines. The sponsoring Republican, Rep. Brad Barrett, of Richmond, pointed to funding concerns for the state's fastest-growing expenditure, saying limiting enrollment would preserve the government insurance option for the neediest. He acknowledged the outpouring of personal stories in committee, calling it a 'perfect storm' between expiring COVID-era enrollment protections, a federal court ruling and state costs. 'We're really forced to do something this legislative session,' Barrett said. Under Senate Bill 2, those enrolled in the Healthy Indiana Plan — which covers low- to moderate-income Hoosiers between the ages of 19 and 64 — will need to either work or volunteer for 20 hours each week, with several exceptions for caregivers, disabled beneficiaries and more. That group is essentially the expansion population authorized by the legislature in 2015. The bill also moves toward retroactive eligibility, rather than presumptive eligibility, and restricts the advertising of Medicaid services. Democrats decried adding an additional administrative burden on the Family and Social Services Administration by increasing eligibility checks from annually to quarterly. 'I don't know how many of you have actually been on Medicaid. I don't know how many of you have actually gone through a Medicaid redetermination process. I don't know how many of you have been in fear of losing your health insurance,' said Rep. Robin Shackleford, D-Indianapolis. 'That is what we're talking about here. It's not that we are forced to do something. We are forced to make sure that we are ensuring that the Hoosiers in our state are protected.' She pointed to a forecasting error that created a nearly $1 billion shortfall in the Medicaid program, saying the state should shoulder that expense rather than curbing services for Hoosiers. 'At the end of the day, we're going to pay for these services. Either we pay because the people need services and they'll be going to the emergency room. Or we're going to be paying less because we are providing preventative services to people on the front end,' said Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis. Just one lawmaker crossed over to vote against their caucus: Rep. Wendy Dant Chesser, a Democrat from Jeffersonville. Only Barrett spoke in support of the bill's Medicaid work requirements, saying action was needed to maintain the program's stability. '(In committee), we heard of people that were just thrilled with the benefits they receive in this space. We're simply looking to make sure that those that need the services, get the services,' Barrett said. Due to several House amendments — including one to omit a numerical cap — the Senate must concur, or agree, with the latest version before it can go before Gov. Mike Braun for a signature. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
WIRED
01-03-2025
- WIRED
The Humane Ai Pin Has Already Been Brought Back to Life
Feb 28, 2025 11:54 PM Humane bricked its pricey gadget on Friday afternoon. A short time later, a hacker got the codes to unlock it and potentially turn it into the true smartphone replacement it was meant to be. The day the Humane Ai Pin died, it was also reborn. Or at least, there was hope. On February 28, shortly after noon Pacific time, Humane switched off its servers supporting its contentious Ai Pin—essentially bricking a $700 device that was less than a year old. Minutes later, in a Discord voice chatroom with the label 'The death of Ai Pin,' one member of a band of dedicated hackers, determined to keep their Pins alive, let the rest of the group in on a secret. He had the codes they needed to get through Humane's encryption. Humane's gadget is the poster child of AI-enhanced hardware disappointments. The cute, clippable device was meant to hang on a lapel or shirt pocket and let you carry out many of the functions you'd find in a phone—take pictures, display text messages, and order around an AI chatbot, all with some added pizazz in the form of Humane's promised holographic laser displays. Released to the world in April 2024, the Pin was an immediate disappointment. Its main features simply did not work well, and from there things just got worse. The Pin was a resounding flop, widely mocked, and the company even reached the point where it processed more returns of the device than it had sold. In February 2025, less than a year after the Pin was released, Humane announced it would shut down its services at the end of the month—Friday, February 28—and part off some of its key AI components to the computer company HP. Humane offered few concessions to Pin owners. Refunds would only be given if someone had purchased a Pin within the past 90 days. For the remaining fans of the expensive, short-lived device, the move was a gut punch. In the final week of the Humane Ai Pin's short life, soon-to-be-former users ran through all of the stages of grief across Humane's subreddits and Discord servers. There were furious rebukes. Heartbroken goodbyes. Disappointment all around. 'We're super bummed,' says a Humane Pin user who asked to go by his X handle, @23box_, or just '23' out of fear of being targeted by 'a multi-billion dollar company beholden to shareholders.' He was an early adopter and evangelist for Humane's device who says he used the Humane Ai Pin regularly, up until the minute it went out of service. 'This is a super unique device that we used almost every day for almost a year. We really just wanted this to have a good run.' The official Humane Discord was shut down the morning of February 27. Luckily, 23 had already decided to start a separate Discord server for Humane refugees, called reHumane, in an effort to pursue unsanctioned forays into deconstructing the Pin away from the watchful eye of Humane or HP. 'We didn't want them to know what we were doing,' 23 says. Marcel, another user who gave only his first name to avoid exposing himself to reprisal from HP, saw the end of Humane's brief era as something exciting. He is used to tearing things like this apart. He has constructed his own PlayStation Portal out of a Nintendo Switch. He was one of the first people to transfer the Rabbit R1 source code onto an Android phone (much to the chagrin of a company that insisted its device was not simply an Android app). The Humane Ai Pin lineup. Courtesy of Humane As soon as Humane announced it would be bricking the device, he hurried to figure out how to crack the thing open. Lots of people on the Discord felt the same way—where once they owned a misunderstood, widely mocked device, now there was an opportunity. 'Everyone was pretty psyched to get into this,' Marcel says. The Humane Ai Pin runs an instance of Android as its OS, which means in theory the system could be debugged and have custom apps sideloaded onto it. But the Pin needed to be able to connect to another computer to do that. Since Humane's service was being shut down, wireless features wouldn't work either—it had to be a wired connection. But the Humane Ai Pin has no obvious ports, so finding the way to plug it in wasn't immediately apparent. In a Discord channel dedicated to modifying the Pin, users quickly figured out how to uncover the hidden DIM connectors—they were covered with a moon-shaped sticker of Humane's logo—that would enable a wired connection from the Pin to a computer. The problem was the connectors were tiny, barely 1 millimeter apart, and nobody had any other cords that would fit. After trying several different connector types, Marcel and other tinkerers opted to create their own. Marcel sliced up four different USB cables looking for one with the right wires that could connect to the sensors on the Pin. He soldered them on, plugged the other end of the cord into his computer, and had them connected. But there was another problem. Humane planned to brick the device completely, meaning the operating system on the Pin would be inaccessible after it was shut down. The chip inside the device is encrypted in such a way that it would be difficult to bypass without losing the data and software that makes the Pin operate the way it does. When people like Marcel got it hooked up to their computers, they were greeted with an impassable screen. Marcel, and the community at large, were stuck. It was technically possible to hack it—the right geek can hack just about anything eventually—but getting through that encryption was a different matter. In the meantime, the community responded by organizing and sharing what they could. Brendan Brannock, a 30-year-old network engineer in Florida also working on a way to connect with his Humane Pin, put together a knowledge base document to help other people in the community start tinkering with their own devices. He found a compatible wiring device on Amazon that would connect to the Humane Pin's port and fiddled his way into building a 3D model of a base that would hold the connection in place. He shared the base model on the Discord so anyone with access to a 3D printer could make one for themselves. Connecting the cables still wasn't easy, but making the resources widely available meant more people could get cracking on the project. Brannock bought the Pin because he says he is interested in the frontiers of technology. He has self-implanted three NFC chips under his skin. ('I had a little bit of help from a couple glasses of whiskey,' he says.) They let him do things like start his car, unlock the doors on his house, and log into his password-protected accounts on a computer. The Humane Pin fit right into that spirit of DIY techno experimentation. 'The goal for any device like this is to make it do more,' Brannock says, 'Get the most out of your money.' Humane owners on the reHumane Discord called for the company to put out an OTA—an over the air update that would enable them to access the OS on the device. Humane, in its downward spiral toward dissolution, didn't make any moves to do that. (Humane did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.) The Humane Ai Pin has a built-in projector designed to show messages on your outstretched hand. Courtesy of Humane Still, the word got out, and shortly after the device was shut down on February 28, Marcel had an announcement. Somebody from Humane—he would never say who—had slipped him and a few other users access codes which would let them use Android Debug Bug tools on the Pin to get through Humane's encryption. In the Discord voice chat, Marcel broke the news by sharing his screen and turning on the camera facing his desk. He held out his hand, and across his palm the Humane Ai Pin's laser projector played the music video for Nomico's 'Bad Apple,' which has become a meme as the first video hackers put on a jailbroken device. The chat went wild. The Ai Pin was theirs. Marcel's proclamation caused some fuss, as some of the people in the community who also knew about this development were hoping to hold off a week or two longer. If they tinkered away quietly, after all the fuss had died down, perhaps invested interests like the remnants of Humane and HP would be less inclined to force another update to undo the access that had been granted. 'If we had been quiet about this,' Marcel said in the voice channel, 'it would have taken months and people would have just sold the device and just forgotten about it. This has been a very cool send away from Humane services, and hopefully a new era for these devices.' What exactly Pin users want to do with the device after they crack it open depends on who you ask. Some of them have grand ambitions, like a user in the voice channel who said, 'I keep telling them they should just make this thing shoot lasers.' Marcel just wants to figure out how the thing works, and back up the data to explore later. Brannock and 23 both want to use the Pin for precisely what it is: a smartphone replacement that doesn't require staring at a screen. Others feel the same. 'One of my favorite things about the Pin was capturing memories without a screen between us and our son,' wrote one poster on the Discord, alongside a video of his toddler's first steps, captured by the Pin. Ultimately, the people breaking these devices open really want what they felt like Humane promised them, then ultimately failed to keep alive. They want a device that can capture photos and videos, support some large language model or another, and be used to interact with the world without having to pull a phone out of their pocket. 'There's a reason we got these devices,' 23 says. 'We want to get back to where we were as a society before we had to stare at screens. A lot of us really do just want to touch grass sometimes.' After Marcel made his announcement, the Discord voice chat wound down. Except the channel had a different description now. Instead of 'The death of Ai Pin,' it now read, 'We're so back.'
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WIRED
28-02-2025
- WIRED
So You Bought a Humane Ai Pin. Here's What You Can Do Next
Humane's Ai Pin stopped working today, turning the year-old wearable—which cost millions to build—into a paperweight. Here are some alternatives if you'd rather avoid the e-waste. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED As of today, the Humane Ai Pin is dead—less than a year since its launch. Following an acquisition by HP, Humane shut down many of the core features of the artificial intelligence-powered wearable and deleted user data, rendering it useless. Yes, some functions remain, like checking battery life (useful!), but you can't access the voice assistant. If you spent $700 on the Ai Pin, you might be wondering what you can do now. These are the risks of being an early adopter, but not getting a refund on a device bricked before the warranty is even up feels like a rip-off. Humane sold roughly 10,000 units, though daily returns were outpacing sales at one point, so there are even fewer Pins in the world. Still, that's thousands of effectively useless devices. It's a blip in the amount of e-waste generated in a year around the world—already at a crisis point—but Humane really should have offered a more responsible approach with the Ai Pin's demise. There might not be a way to get your money back, though, if you bought the pin in October of 2024 (for some reason), you might fall under the typical 120-day window to issue a chargeback with your credit card. There are some alternative options, however. Let's explore. File a Complaint With the FTC Killing a product consumers have spent money on is 'unfair and deceptive.' That's what Lucas Gutterman told WIRED via email. He's the campaign director of the Designed to Last campaign at Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG). 'When we buy something with advertised features, we should get what we pay for, and when we get ripped off the law should protect us,' Gutterman says. 'I urge everyone who purchased a Humane AI Pin to file a complaint with the FTC so they can step up and protect consumers.' Photograph: Federal Trade Commission Last year, a coalition of groups like US PIRG and Consumer Reports sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, urging the agency to address 'software tethering,' described as the use of software to control and limit the function of a device after someone buys it. The FTC subsequently conducted a study that attempted to determine software support commitments for more than 180 products, only to find that 'nearly 89 percent of the manufacturer's web pages for these products failed to disclose how long the products would receive software updates.' Humane's warranty states that the 'software and software functionality' are excluded, which is often the case on many connected products. But the study also noted that it's deceptive if manufacturers market a device's features but then fail to provide software updates to maintain those capabilities—it may violate the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act, which was enacted in 1975 to protect consumers from unfair disclaimers in warranties. 'Without transparent labeling of length of software support, or by taking away key features that were advertised, manufacturers might be violating the FTC Act by deceiving consumers," Gutterman says. "Paying for a $700 product that's supposed to work, and then being told it will suddenly stop working, is a 'harm consumers cannot avoid,' although it's one that Humane could have humanely avoided before they shipped e-waste-to-be." You can file a complaint with the FTC here. Pressure Humane to Open Up the Software Sometimes, when companies stop delivering updates to products and shut down core features, a devoted community comes to the rescue to revive or maintain capabilities of the product (or mod it to do something else). We've seen this time and time again, like with the iPod, the Game Boy, or even the Pebble smartwatch. The Humane Ai Pin may not have enough doting admirers up for the task, but this process would be made simpler if Humane released the keys to the software. Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, says Humane should follow Pebble's lead and open the device up. Either that or we'll have to wait for someone to find a vulnerability and jailbreak the Ai Pin to write custom software for it. Humane did not respond to our request for comment. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. What could you do with this little wearable pin? Wiens had some ideas. 'You could just use it as a Walkie-Talkie. … A pin that talks to the internet, has a camera and microphone, sounds pretty cool. It's like a Star Trek communications pin." Dispose or Disassemble It If you want to just get rid of the thing, Wiens says to make sure you remove the battery first and then take it to an e-recycler. We also have a detailed guide on how to responsibly dispose of your electronics. Make sure you do the same for the other accessories that came in the box, though you can easily repurpose Humane's nifty charging adapter and the nice braided cable. Alternatively, you can use a service like Grid and have the company deconstruct and frame the Humane Ai Pin, so you can hang it up on the wall and remind yourself every day of the $700 you lost. I know it's a little hard to think about spending more money on this wearable, but at least it'd look cool. You could turn your Ai Pin into a 'unique framed artwork' and commemorate the $700 you lost. Photograph: Grid Grid accepts custom orders, so I asked the company if it would consider the Ai Pin. The answer is yes—for a cool $90, which includes design, materials, and shipping. 'We have carefully examined the structure of the Humane AI Pin and can confirm that we are able to provide a deconstruction and framing service for it. If anyone is interested in preserving their AI Pin as a unique framed artwork instead of letting it go to waste, they can definitely reach out to us.' You can email support@ to inquire about this custom request. Use It as a Paperweight or Keep It Safe The Ai Pin is more than up to the complex task of weighing down paper! Photograph: Julian Chokkattu It's not the heftiest thing in the world, but the Ai Pin can do the complex job of a paperweight. Or you can keep it in the box and put it away somewhere safe. In 50 years, you'll accidentally find it in the attic and then you can tell your grandkids how this little gadget was once—for a fleeting moment—supposed to be the next big thing.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Yahoo
The Humane AI Pin debacle is a reminder that AI alone doesn't make a compelling product
The demise of Humane is perhaps the most predictable tech story of 2025. The company tried to build some buzz around its AI Pin in late 2023, marketing the device as a tiny replacement for smartphones and playing up the fact that Humane's co-founders were former Apple employees. The problem was that it wasn't really clear what the AI Pin would do to justify its $700 asking price (plus a $24/month subscription). It didn't take long for things to spiral out of control. The AI Pin was released in April of 2024 to some of the worst reviews I've ever seen for a consumer tech product. Just a month after launch, reports surfaced that the company was already trying to be acquired — for the positively ludicrous sum of $750 million to $1 billion dollars. At the same time, it was rumored that Humane sold only 10,000 Pins, a far cry from the 100,000 they had planned for. HP was named as a potential suitor last May, and the company smartly waited until they could pluck Humane for a comparatively paltry $116 million. As it turned out, waving your hands and shouting about the promise of AI doesn't make it any easier to build compelling hardware — we slammed its high price, terrible battery life, slow performance, excessive heat and hard-to-use projected display. (And Engadget was far from the only publication to eviscerate this device.) For a device whose main interface was conversational, the challenges the AI Pin had answering questions or executing commands made it a non-starter. Even when it did what was asked, it did it in some strange ways, like sending generic texts instead of letting you dictate what exactly you wanted to say. Its camera rarely worked as intended; after taking photos and viewing them on the projector, the Pin would get extremely warm and sometimes just shut down entirely. Speaking of that projection screen, it was nearly impossible to actually see it outdoors, even on a cloudy day. And interacting with it made our reviewer Cherlynn Low want to 'rip [her] eyes out.' See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Oh, let's not forget that its extended battery case was recalled because it was a full-on fire hazard! The whole debacle is an illustrative example of how most consumer-grade AI isn't ready for prime time. Google and Apple may be trying to shove Gemini and Apple Intelligence down our throats on nearly every product they make, but those tools are additive, built on top of the strong foundations of each company's existing platforms. In Humane's case, there was nothing to fall back on. And the combo of terrible voice responses and recognition paired with a projector display that was not at all ready for prime time (not to mention the other hardware failings) was far too much to overcome. To be fair to Humane, building hardware is notoriously difficult; first-generation products often have glaring flaws, even when you're talking about massive companies like Apple. The first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch may have shown huge promise, but they also had strange omissions and performance issues that made them hard to recommend to everyone. Some companies manage to figure that out; Pebble is a great example of a hardware startup that survived some early issues to find some success. It beat Apple, Samsung and Google to the smartwatch market, and did it in a way that has yet to be imitated (maybe that's why the company is being resurrected). The Pebble wasn't exactly the most elegant piece of hardware, but both the watch and its software worked well enough that it paved the way for the more advanced smartwatches we have today. Of course, that wasn't enough to keep Pebble alive, as the company eventually filed for insolvency and had its assets picked up by Fitbit (which was later purchased by Google, if you're keeping track). Humane's situation at launch wasn't entirely different — it was trying to build a new type of hardware altogether, and history tells us that the first products in a new space are going to be far from perfect. But, if there had at least been a glimmer of useful software, Humane might have survived to improve on those hardware problems with a future version. But its assistant was so bad that it killed any potential that the AI Pin had. There was simply no intelligence to be found here, artificial or otherwise. My takeaway from the Humane disaster is that it's too soon to spend your hard-earned money on the promise of AI — the marketplace isn't solidified at this point, and trusting a brand-new company like Humane to get this sort of thing right is several bridges too far. (If you're not convinced, look at the similarly flawed Rabbit R1.) Apple Intelligence is still half-baked at best, but at least you can turn it off and ignore it. But the AI Pin, well, relied completely on AI, and it wasn't just 'not ready' — it was one of the worst devices we've ever tried in our nearly 21 years as a publication. For some thousands of early adopters, that means their Pin will be a brick in just a few days, with no financial compensation coming their way. But hey, at least it will still be able to tell you its battery level.
