I’ve been wishing for a product like MyRow to come onto the market for as long as I can remember. I love rowing, and own a Concept2 Model D, which is one of the world’s most popular rowing machines. Concept2’s ergometers — which is the fancy word for “rowing machine” — are a mainstay of gyms all around the world. But the Vermont-based company has dragged its feet when it comes to embracing the smart fitness revolution. The best it offers is some clips on its latest machine that can be used to hold a third-party tablet in place.
Inspired by Peloton, plenty of other companies have bolted HD screens with live classes to their gym equipment. But Concept2 is still standing by the PM5, a little black box with a liquid crystal display that debuted in 2014 which displays stats like your split times and stroke rate. If you can’t quite imagine how I feel: It’s as if you own a Game Boy, and everyone else in the world is rocking a Steam Deck. To try and improve matters, I bought a little 3D-printed smartphone holder from eBay but, even so, it’s hard not to feel short-changed.
Step forward MyRow, the brainchild of Gary Simpson, founder of Transit Wireless, the company that brought cell service to the New York City subway. While sheltering in place from COVID, he had a Concept2 and a Peloton bike at home to help keep in shape. Back at CES, he told me, despite his love of rowing, he would often default to the bike with its glossy screen and video classes. Inspired, he founded MyRow in the spirit of bringing something similar to the Concept2.
The end product is an internet-connected display that can be retrofitted onto a Concept2 Model C, D, E or RowErg so long as it is equipped with the PM5. The package includes a 22-inch display, power adapter and the mounting arm you’ll need to bolt onto the rower. Once installed, you can access on-demand video classes and digital workout guides, as well as just a nicer way to stare at your rowing stats compared to the sub-Game Boy display you’re used to.
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Installation took me less than half an hour, and most of that was just bolting the mounting arm onto the rower. Bear in mind, you’ll need to run a data cable from the PM5 to MyRow since the tablet can’t interface with the machine directly. I hope you’re good at cable management, since you’ll need to find a way to elegantly route the data and power cables along the body of the rower.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
Under the hood, MyRow is just a skinned Android tablet which takes a minute to boot, with software updates taking another minute. Given the device is so new, there have been lots of updates, including the addition of plans and features. The UI is simple enough, with big target boxes and clean lines, which is ideal if you need to change a setting mid-row.
There’s a surprising amount of connectivity in this thing, too, with ports for Ethernet, USB-C, micro-USB, USB-A and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Plus, it’s Bluetooth and ANT+ compatible for any wireless headphones or heart-rate monitors you use. There’s a forward-facing webcam in the body that isn’t being used for anything right now. The company is looking to build a form analysis tool that’ll harness it eventually, and may also use the camera to enhance group rows.
Once your feet are strapped in and you’ve got one hand on the grab, it’s time to pick your workout. Users can select from video workouts, as well as preset and custom training plans that will just throw your intervals on the screen. The stats are laid out like pretty much every other on-demand fitness class, with your key vitals running along the bottom. That includes calories burned, distance rowed, stroke rate, pace per 500 meters, average pace, stroke length, power and average power.
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On the left side of the display, you’ll get a timeline showing you when the next internal is, and on the right-hand side, a leaderboard for the video class you’re participating in. I surprised myself, because I don’t think of myself as someone who is that competitive, but the leaderboards brought something out in me. The fact I was able to leap into the top 10 in a number of classes is, I’m sure, just down to MyRow’s presently small user base. But, a win is a win.
Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
As much as I enjoy using MyRow, I do have one gripe given the custom nature of the product. Concept2’s rowing machines use air resistance, so when you pull the chain you’re driving a fan. A fan which kicks out enough noise that it can drown out the instructor’s voice and music even when you turn the volume up to max. Maybe sharper-eared rowers won’t find it a problem, but I wish they’d have made more effort to compensate for the general noise of the rower.
Now, 2024 has been a year of rigorous self-examination and one where I’m humble enough to admit my flaws. I’m nearly 40 and I’m never going to magically evolve into one of those people who cares about their own marginal gains. I’m not going to look at a countdown timer, compare it to my previous lap’s best and then try to beat it on a regular basis. And as much as I love rowing, I get bored, and a big screen could alleviate that if I can watch the streaming service of my choice while I do so.
This is why I’m excited to know that MyRow has promised to integrate streaming videos into its platform by spring 2025. Because when you’re not taking an on-demand video class, you’re just staring at a well-designed stats screen. The sooner we can add any sort of entertainment to that, even if it’s just a clip of someone rowing down a beautiful river, the better.
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Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget
I’m optimistic about MyRow’s potential to help turn the Concept2 into a machine that’s a little friendlier, even for its diehard users. It’s available to buy now, with the tablet setting you back $500 and the membership costs either $36 a month or $359.88 if you pay for the year, which represents a 20 percent discount. If you get the tablet on its own, however, you’ll still be able to use the Just Row feature, although it’s a hefty price for basically better data visualization.
To some degree, every business that has a presence on the web is in the content business — whether that’s for informing customers, finding new clients, or for SEO. That means managing the production of those texts and images, updating them, and potentially optimizing them for a search engine to index and rank. Since large language models (LLMs) are quite good at generating text, it’s no surprise (and unwelcome news for freelance copywriters) that businesses now expect their content operations tools to also generate text and images for them.
AirOps, which is announcing a $15.5 million Series A funding round today, wants to be the all-in-one platform for doing all of that, with a focus of managing and generating content at scale.
In its early days, the company had a significantly broader remit. When we first wrote about AirOps after its $7 million seed round in 2023, the team was building an LLM-based tool that allowed any business to create AI-enabled applications.
Image Credits:AirOps
“It’s just been this process of figuring out where can the models deliver real value in the economy for real customers,” AirOps co-founder and CEO Alex Halliday told me. After launching the original product, the team talked to a lot of customers to get a better grip on the problems they were trying to solve with a platform like the early version of AirOps.
As many businesses have now realized, there are areas where you can’t yet rely on LLMs to perform to a consistent benchmark. But one area where they do well enough — for better or worse — is generating content.
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“It was a little bit ironic, because when we first started working with LLMs — think content and maybe less SEO — content seemed like a solved problem with all the first kind of generation of models,” AirOps co-founder Matt Hammel said. But it’s also far too easy to get these models to create bad content that doesn’t fit a company’s brand — and the real problems start once you have to manage and update this sudden plethora of text.
That’s where AirOps comes in. It allows businesses to use virtually any popular model (and bring their own API keys to them, if they want to) to generate text and images, and it allows companies to put what it calls guardrails around this, while also keeping humans in the loop. It also focuses on streamlining the overall workflow from content generation to optimization.
Image Credits:AirOps
It’s no secret that the internet is quickly filling up with drab LLM-generated slop that is often incorrect. The AirOps team is aware of this and throughout the conversation, the team stressed that its focus is on quality.
“The core thing we tell customers again and again is that when working with LLMs, the quality of the content in equals the quality of the content out,” Halliday said. “We help the customers find these little nuggets or little gold mines internally that they can transform into content.”
Halliday, who previously ran product at Masterclass, also stressed that he believes educating customers is key.
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To build out the product and kickstart its go-to-market operations, AirOps has now raised its Series A. The round was led by Unusual Ventures, with participation from Wing VC, Founder Collective, Xfund, and Alt Capital.
Getting a Dell Power Edge 2950 III ready to be sold. Making sure that all is working well, and trying out installing Proxmox VE 6.1
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My PlayHouse is a channel where i will show, what i am working on. I have this house, it is 168 Square Meters / 1808.3ft² and it is full, of half-finished projects.
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Anker has released its new Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro wireless earbuds that include improved noise canceling and faster charging than their predecessors. The most obvious change, though, is the upgraded case with a screen to show battery life or adjust ANC settings without grabbing your phone.
The Liberty 4 Pro is available now for $129.99, which is $20 cheaper than the $149.99 Soundcore Liberty 4 that debuted in 2022 and $70 cheaper than the previous version, the $169.99 Liberty 3 Pro from 2021.
The Liberty 4 Pro are available in three color options: glossy black, white, and glossy light blue.Image: Anker
The screen added to the Liberty 4 Pro’s charging case could be a welcome addition for those with battery anxiety, but it’s not a new feature for wireless earbuds. JBL added a 1.45-inch touchscreen to the charging case of its Tour Pro 2 in 2023, which offered a lot of functionality, including playback controls, volume adjustments, EQ settings, and even notifications from a connected smartphone. The screen on the Liberty 4 Pro is more limited, with a small touch bar below it that can be swiped to adjust the ANC or turn on transparency mode.
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Anker says that on a full charge, the buds alone will run for 10 hours with ANC off or 7.5 hours with it on. That’s boosted to 40 hours when paired with the charging case or 30 hours when you factor in ANC. When they’re completely dead, a quick five-minute charge will revive the earbuds with four hours of playtime, while the case charges over USB-C or with a wireless charging pad.
The Liberty 4 Pro earbuds pair a 10.5-millimeter bass driver with a smaller 4.6-millimeter titanium-coated tweeter for improved overall sound reproduction, while ANC is powered by six microphones (three on each bud) plus a barometric sensor that takes into account changing air pressure for improved performance on flights. The earbuds support Bluetooth 5.3, multipoint connections, and the SBC, AAC, and LDAC codecs, although the latter can only be used when paired with an Android device.
Spatial audio is supported, with the ability to track the movements of your head, while an IPX5 rating means you can wear the Liberty 4 Pro in the rain or during an especially sweaty workout without issue. They’re now available through Anker’s online store and Amazon in three color options: glossy black, white, and glossy light blue.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets: U.S. stocks were lower Thursday as Wall Street extends Tuesday’s sharp selloff, which was triggered by concern over Iran’s missile attacks on Israel. All three stock benchmarks closed only slightly higher Wednesday. U.S. oil prices have been soaring — up another 4%-plus to more than $73 per barrel — as the world awaits a response from Israel, which has vowed to retaliate. There are fears that Israel could target Iran’s oil infrastructure and cause major supply disruptions. The Mideast uncertainty was putting a lid on the Dow , the S & P 500 , and the Nasdaq ahead of Friday’s pivotal jobs reports. Club movers : Constellation Brands was our worst-performing stock Thursday, losing more than 4% after the Modelo and Corona brewer’s earnings contained no real surprises . After Constellation made big changes to its guidance a month ago, the stock had been outperforming the market. Nvidia was our best-performer on the session, gaining more than 3% on positive comments from CEO Jensen Huang to CNBC late Wednesday about “insane” demand for the company’s upcoming artificial intelligence Blackwell chip platform. Huang also said Blackwell was in “full production,” reassuring investors following some recent snags. Multiyear high : Dow and Club stock Home Depot reached its highest level since late 2021 before reversing slightly lower with the rest of the market Thursday. The home-improvement retailer got a positive mention Wednesday from research firm Gordon Haskett, which upgraded the stock to a buy and raised its price target to $450 per share. On Thursday, Home Depot’s retail advertising unit, Orange Apron Media, announced a new self-service platform, allowing onsite and offsite campaigns. Retailers, including fellow Club name Amazon , are increasingly getting into the lucrative digital ad business. Power possibilities : Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is looking at possibly using nuclear energy to power its data centers. In a Nikkei interview , Pichai said that such considerations are part of the company’s net-zero 2030 emissions goal. The CEO’s comments came shortly after Microsoft agreed to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy , which plans to restart Three Mile Island as part of the deal. Pichai also mentioned solar. On Thursday, Alphabet announced a 12-year agreement to buy renewable energy from a solar project under development. The rise of generative AI computing has forced tech companies to think critically about the power that will supply their growing data center footprint. In general, AI computing is more energy intensive than traditional workloads of the past. Up next : There are no major earnings Thursday evening or Friday. As mentioned, the big market event of the week is Friday’s employment report. It follows Wednesday’s better-than-expected ADP data on U.S. companies’ hiring and Thursday’s worse-than-expected weekly jobless claims. Wall Street will be parsing the government’s jobs numbers for their implications on future Fed interest rate cuts. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street.
The number of phishing emails that masquerade as notifications from Microsoft services is skyrocketing, a new report from Check Point has warned.
In the report, the researchers said that just in September, its service caught more than 5,000 such emails – and to make matters worse, the attackers have gotten extremely good at creating a legitimate-looking email.
The usual suspects – spelling and grammar, color scheme, the email’s outline – all of these things have been brought to perfection: “The language is perfect. The style is familiar. The graphics look impeccable,” the researchers said. “So, what should organizations do?” Furthermore, these emails now come with copy-pasted Microsoft privacy policy statements, or links to Microsoft and Bing, all of which makes spotting the ruse with the naked eye almost impossible.
Training and AI
Ultimately, even the ‘sender’ field in the email looks believable now. Instead of the usual private, or unknown domains, these emails appear to be coming from organizational domains impersonating legitimate administrators.
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All of this means there is a higher chance of organizations losing sensitive information, or becoming infected with malware and even ransomware.
In response, organizations need to invest heavily into user awareness training, since employees will no longer be able to hunt for spelling and grammar mistakes in phishing emails, Check Point argues.
Also, they should deploy AI-powered email security, essentially fighting AI with AI, and finally, always keep their software and hardware updated.
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