Connect with us
DAPA Banner
DAPA Coin
DAPA
COIN PAYMENT ASSET
PRIVACY · BLOCKDAG · HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION · RUST
ElGamal Encrypted MINE DAPA
🚫 GENESIS SOLD OUT
DAPAPAY COMING

Tech

Corgi, the buzzy Y Combinator-backed insurance tech startup, says it didn’t steal an open source product

Published

on

Y Combinator-backed insurance tech startup Corgi became embroiled in yet another controversy earlier this week when Papermark, maker of open source data room software, accused Corgi of stealing its software and passing it off as its own.

Corgi denies this. “No code was used from Papermark,” the company tells TechCrunch.

But there were reasons why people believed the initial allegation, which was made by Papermark co-founder Marc Seitzon X and concerned Corgi’s newly released product called Dataroom. Deal room software is essentially secure document sharing. It is famously used by startups to pitch VCs and send them supporting materials for due diligence.

Seitz’s post blew up because he shared screenshots showing Corgi’s product using the same language for the same features as Papermark’s, word for word. He went as far as to call Corgi’s new product copyright- and license-infringing, and “fraud.”

Advertisement
Image Credits:Marc Seitz/Papermark

Corgi’s co-founder and CEO Nico Laqua saw the tweet and promised to investigate. Soon after, he responded on X with a full denial, showing that the code was different between the two products.

While he strenuously pushed back on the allegations of a license violation — arguing that “copying my style” is a different claim than “stealing enterprise code” — he did admit that relying on a vibe-coding design led to the replica features.

“Looking back, we should’ve leaned more into our own language and visual choices instead of taking cues from existing products in the space, and that’s on us,” he posted.

A Corgi spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the offending features were vibe-coded and said they have already been changed, downplaying the situation.

“The issues were isolated to visual elements on two peripheral settings pages,” the spokesperson told us, adding that these elements were “immediately updated” and that “our team confirmed that no code was used from Papermark.”

Advertisement

Laqua and the spokesperson also accused Papermark of making these accusations because Corgi is offering a less expensive product. “I get that this stings since we’re putting out something mostly free that competes with his SaaS. I’d be mad too,” Laqua wrote of Seitz. Seitz did not respond to a request for comment.

The copying of visual elements and identical feature language, however, went beyond sour grapes as a credible complaint. It raises a new and thornier question: If vibe coding makes it so easy to copy the look, feel, and every function of another’s work, while not copying every line of the code itself, how much does it matter if the source isn’t identical?

Obviously, legally speaking, it’s the only thing that matters. So this is not the same as the controversy over Y Combinator alum PearAI, a 2024 startup that admitted to cloning another open source project and releasing it under its own license.

Morally speaking, this is ambiguous and will become increasingly common.

Advertisement

As fellow YC alum and founder of the agent operating system OpenProse Dan Barrett explained on X: “In a world where a bot can trivially copy 1:1 the structure of something even if the character-level code diverges … what makes one unacceptable and the other not? existing IP law, incidental to the old world? is there not some greater principle at work here?”

Corgi is now vigorously trying to clean up any reputational damage. It has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Seitz demanding that he take down the tweet, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The founder of Hello World Cafe, which competes in part with Corgi’s coffee shop business, says he also received a cease-and-desist from Corgi’s lawyers over a tweet joking about the Dataroom controversy. Though X still remembers. There have been hundreds of comments and countless subtweets.

This is not the first time Corgi has been accused of heavy-handed legal tactics. In May, competitor Matcha accused the company of bullying behavior, a dispute that unfolded alongside a separate lawsuit. The two-year-old startup has also sued various former employees and developed a growing reputation for being litigious.

(Corgi also offers a 24-hour coffee shop, with plans to open more, Laqua recently said on VC Harry Stebbings’ podcast.)

Advertisement

This latest hullabaloo adds to a growing list of chatter around Corgi. The two-year-old startup, for instance, has a growing reputation for being litigious. It’s already sued various former employees.

Laqua also recently went viral for his comments on Stebbings’ podcast about how he expects employees to work seven days a week. “Whatever you can get done in five days, I promise you, you’ll get more done in six and seven,” he said.

That is, of course, the fallacy of startup hustle culture. Decades of research repeatedly conclude that human productivity is not a quadratic equation. While sprints can be effective and build camaraderie for short-term problems like the site going down, the research shows that, as a matter of routine, more hours of work reduces productivity, not the other way around.

The startup also got tongues wagging for how fast it has raised money with increasing valuations, even by AI-startup standards. Last month, Corgi raised a $106 million Series B1, valuing the company at $2.6 billion, just three weeks after announcing a $160 million Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation and four months after its $108 million Series A. 

Advertisement

Corgi also operates a 24-hour coffee shop, with plans to open more, Laqua said on the Stebbings podcast.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Tech

This cross-device clipboard app solves the copy-paste problem I keep running into on my Mac

Published

on

I have lost count of how many times I have copied something important, copied another thing before pasting it, and then realized the first item was gone. It is a small frustration, but it happens often enough to become annoying. I recently came across ClipboardAI, which caught my attention because it goes beyond Apple’s built-in clipboard by saving copied items into a searchable history.

Instead of replacing the last thing you copied every time, ClipboardAI keeps a searchable record of copied text, links, codes, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and images across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. That means an older clip does not disappear just because you copied something new.

It saves, sorts, and brings clips back quickly

ClipboardAI uses on-device AI to sort copied items into links, codes, emails, addresses, phone numbers, text, and images. Users can also create collections for material they reuse often, including research links, templates, travel details, or saved snippets.

The keyboard extension is the feature that makes the app feel most useful. It can show up to 20 recent clips inside any iOS text field, so you do not have to leave Messages, Mail, Slack, Safari, or another app to paste something copied earlier.

The app can summarize copied text, generate link previews, detect languages, offer translations, turn lists into checklists, and solve math expressions or unit conversions. Some tools will be useful often, while others are more situational.

Advertisement

The privacy approach is important

Since clipboards often contain private information like passwords, codes, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and copied messages, privacy is a make-or-break factor for apps like this. ClipboardAI keeps AI features on-device, stores clips locally using SwiftData, and avoids analytics, ads, third-party SDKs, and developer-run servers.

The app also treats sensitive clips differently from regular copied items. It can detect passwords, API tokens, credit card numbers, and SSNs, and then blur them by default. Passwords can disappear after 60 seconds, and sensitive clips stay out of the keyboard extension unless the user changes that setting.

Sync runs through the user’s own iCloud account and is optional. The free version includes automatic capture, categories, search, and up to 10 saved clips. Pro adds unlimited clips, iCloud sync, the keyboard extension, AI features, and collections, with a 7-day yearly trial and a $24.99 lifetime option.

Not everyone needs a clipboard manager. But if you lose copied links, codes, notes, or addresses several times a week, ClipboardAI could be a useful replacement for Apple’s built-in clipboard.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Trump Administration Allows Anthropic to Release Mythos to Select US Organizations

Published

on

The US government has eased the restrictions it imposed on Anthropic’s most advanced AI model, Claude Mythos 5, allowing the company to grant access to more than 100 US organizations, including large corporations and government agencies.

In a letter sent to Anthropic’s cofounder and chief compute officer Tom Brown obtained by WIRED, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the AI lab it would permit certain trusted partners to access Mythos because he had “determined that appropriate safeguards are in place.” Semafor first reported the existence of the letter.

“Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the Covered Models. These efforts have yielded significant progress,” Lutnick wrote.

However, the government stopped short of permitting a broader rollout of the model, and said nothing about the fate of Claude Fable 5, the consumer-facing version of Mythos that Anthropic released with significant additional safeguards. Lutnick noted in his letter that the other requirements outlined in the initial directive he sent on June 12 remain in effect.

Advertisement

“We received notice from the US government that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers,” Anthropic spokesperson Eduardo Maia Silva said in a statement to WIRED. “We are working to provision the approved set of providers and restore their access to Mythos 5 as quickly as possible. We are pleased to see this progress and continue to work with the government to expand access to Mythos 5 and make Fable 5 available for general use again.”

Anthropic is still in discussions with the White House about restoring access to Fable 5, and they are expected to continue over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter. Both parties are hopeful the resolution of this incident will help inform a lasting policy framework for future model releases, the person said.

The partial reinstatement comes roughly two weeks after the White House sent an export control directive to Anthropic that required the company to limit foreign nationals from accessing Mythos and Fable 5, including people working and living in the United States. In response, Anthropic disabled access to the models entirely. In his latest letter, Lutnick wrote that organizations approved to use Mythos may now allow their foreign national employees to access the model, and Anthropic may do the same for its own foreign national employees.

The Trump administration grew concerned about Anthropic’s rollout of Mythos after it learned the company granted access to a South Korean telecommunications firm it believed had ties to China, WIRED previously reported. Amazon and the National Security Agency also separately raised concerns to the White House that Fable 5 could be jailbroken, and the confluence of events convinced officials they needed to take action.

Advertisement

In recent weeks, Anthropic sent senior members from its cybersecurity and AI safety teams to Washington, DC to meet with Trump administration officials. Along with Brown, Anthropic’s public policy chief Sarah Heck have been leading the company’s discussions with the US Department of Commerce.

Getting Mythos 5 back online marks a promising step forward for Anthropic and the White House, but the saga has raised broader questions about the overall direction of US AI policy, particularly the extent to which the Trump administration will seek to control future model releases. On Friday, OpenAI announced it was delaying the release of its upcoming GPT 5.6 models in response to a request from the Trump administration.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

After hiring AWS exec and raising $107M seed round, Virginia startup plants flag in Seattle area

Published

on

Baskar Sridharan. (Trase Photo)

Virginia-based AI startup Trase is expanding its presence in the Seattle region, with plans to grow from about 20 employees in the area today to as many as 100 in the coming months.

The 56-person company this week publicly launched and raised a $107 million seed round to focus on highly regulated industries like healthcare. Arch Venture Partners led the seed round.

GeekWire previously reported on the company’s hiring of Baskar Sridharan — a longtime Microsoft, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services engineering leader — as president. It is now using the Seattle area as a key engineering hub, with plans to expand in the region with new offices to accommodate growth plans.

Sridharan, who is growing the Seattle-area team, said AI adoption is stalling where it’s needed most.

“AI adoption is faltering within sectors that need it most: complex, highly regulated enterprises overburdened with administrative tasks that are ripe for automation,” Sridharan wrote in a previous LinkedIn post. “The issue isn’t innovation, it’s implementation.”

Advertisement

He added: “The next era of technology will be increasingly defined by those willing to solve the messy, complex problems of real-world AI deployment at scale.”

Before joining Trase, Sridharan spent nearly 16 years at Microsoft, where he helped build Azure storage technologies. He later became vice president of engineering for Google Cloud before joining Amazon Web Services as vice president of AI, machine learning services, and infrastructure.

The company also recently hired Srirama Koneru, the former general manager of Bedrock Agentic AI Infrastructure and GenAI Services at Amazon Web Services and former senior director of engineering at Google and at Salesforce. The company’s CEO is Grant Verstandig, the founder and CEO of Red Cell.

Trase, incubated by the venture studio Red Cell Partners, is building an agentic platform that enables enterprises in healthcare, national security and energy to deploy autonomous AI agents within existing infrastructure while meeting security and compliance requirements.

Advertisement

Customers include Duke University Health System, which is using the specialized agents in its Division of Cardiology to automate the more than 5,000 faxes the clinic receives each month.

The expansion adds to Seattle’s growing reputation as a hub for enterprise AI talent, particularly among startups recruiting experienced cloud infrastructure leaders from Microsoft, Google and Amazon. GeekWire tracks a list of more than 100 engineering centers in the Seattle area.

We’ve reached out to the company and we’ll update this post as we learn more. The expansion in Seattle was first reported by The Puget Sound Business Journal.
Update: The company confirmed its expansion plans in the region and provided this statement: “Seattle is one of the nation’s leading technology hubs, making it a natural market for Trase as it continues to scale its operations.”

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Porsche Trades the Cayman for a 911 in Its Latest GT4 R Race Car

Published

on

Porsche 911 GT4 R Rce Car Reveal
Porsche lifted the curtain this week, with a clear message for its customer racing community. The new 911 GT4 R replaces the long-running Cayman-based GT4 models and becomes the first car in this category to wear the iconic 911 shape. Built on the same foundation as the current 911 Cup, the car arrives in time for the 2027 season and carries a starting price of $375,500 in the United States, including delivery.



The shift away from the mid-engine Cayman chassis makes a lot of sense, considering that Porsche has discontinued producing gas-powered 718s and has already invested heavily in the 992.2-generation 911 Cup vehicle. Now, teams and drivers are looking at a single platform to climb the ranks, with the potential to move from the Porsche one-make series to the GT4 R and then to the GT3 R without having to relearn an entirely new car layout or support network, and let’s be honest, the rear-engine balance and wider track give the new car a much more stable feel on track than the old Cayman version.

Sale


LEGO Speed Champions Porsche 911 GT3 RS Super Car Toy – Model Kit & Pretend Play Toy for Boys & Girls…
  • BUILD A RACING LEGEND – Boys and girls ages 9 years old and up can construct the LEGO Speed Champions Porsche 911 GT3 RS Super Car (77239) building…
  • AUTHENTIC PORSCHE DETAILS – Young builders can recreate the real-life vehicle’s signature elements including the famous rear wing, air intake…
  • 1 PORSCHE DRIVER MINIFIGURE – Kids can place the driver minifigure with helmet and red Porsche Track Day Experience outfit behind the wheel to stage…

Porsche 911 GT4 R Race Car Reveal
The new car is powered by a 4.0-liter flat-six boxer engine, which is identical to the one used in the 911 GT3, but has been tuned during Cup development. In its unrestricted form, it produces a strong 520 PS (513 horsepower) at 8,400 rpm and 470 Nm of torque at 6,150 rpm, with a redline of 8,750 rpm. Of course, most race series now limit power to 430 PS thanks to factory-installed 53.7-millimeter air restrictors. The power is transmitted to the rear wheels via a six-speed sequential dog-ring gearbox with paddle shifters and a four-disc racing clutch, which is all linked together by a limited slip differential.

Porsche 911 GT4 R Race Car Reveal
The chassis retains the 911 Cup’s steel structure and integrated roll cage while being modified to comply with GT4 regulations. They’ve also begun to use natural fiber-reinforced plastic on the doors, engine cover, aerodynamic components, and even some interior trim to decrease weight without losing strength. With an overall weight of roughly 1,515 kg (3,340 pounds), ballast plates can be used to achieve specified series minimums if necessary. The front and rear track widths are slightly larger than the original Cayman GT4, and the car comes with 18-inch forged wheels with a five-bolt layout, rather than center-lock hubs.

Porsche 911 GT4 R Race Car Reveal
The suspension setup remains highly flexible, with dual-adjustable dampers paired with three different spring rates, allowing you to tune the car to the circuit and the driver’s preferences. The brakes have huge two-piece steel rotors (380mm in diameter), six-piston front calipers, and four-piston rear units. What about aerodynamics? They’ve simply built straight on the Cup package, with a manually adjustable rear wing with eleven settings on swan-neck mounts, additional cooling apertures on the nose, functional vents on the fenders, and side skirts with splitters to help manage airflow underneath the car. Finally, a small ducktail feature provides some rear treatment.

Porsche 911 GT4 R Race Car Interior
Inside the cockpit, you are kept focused on the road because the entire setup is designed to put you in the zone. A big 10.3-inch color display in front of you, accompanied by a built-in data logger and a very precise GPS system, allows you to examine your performance after each session. Everything is wrapped in natural fiber inside panels, which adds a nice touch. You also have air jacks and ventilation ready in case you need to shift your vehicle into the fast lane.

Porsche 911 GT4 R Race Car Interior
Porsche intended the 911 to compete in GT4 America, the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Grand Sport class, and their own one-make series, such as the Porsche Carrera Cup North America and the Sprint Challenge. Since 2016, more than 1,500 Cayman-based GT4s have raced, earning Porsche numerous factory titles and driver victories. The new 911 aims to build on that success while also giving drivers a clearer path up Porsche’s customer motorsport ladder. Deliveries are slated to begin in late 2026, as teams currently running 911 Cup cars will notice a plethora of shared parts and setup expertise that has already been dialed in from their current cars, resulting in lower running costs and a speedier development period upfront.
[Source]

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Apple Raises Prices On Macs, iPads, and More By Hundreds of Dollars

Published

on

Apple has sharply raised prices across its Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV lineups as surging AI-driven demand creates a global memory and storage shortage. Increases range from $30 for the HomePod mini to $1,300 for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, with Apple CEO Tim Cook saying efforts to shield customers from higher costs had become “unsustainable.” The Verge reports: On Thursday, the company adjusted the price of its new MacBook Neo, which will now start at $699 instead of $599, while the base MacBook Air will jump to $1,299 from $1,099, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is getting an increase as well, going from $1,699 to $1,999. Meanwhile, the iPad Air will now start at $749 instead of $599, while the iPad Pro is increasing to $1,199 from $999.

As spotted by MacRumors, the M4 Max Mac Studio will now cost $2,499, a big jump from $1,999. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio is now priced at $5,299, up from $3,999. Apple is even raising the prices of its HomePod, which now costs $349 instead of $299, as well as bumping the price of the HomePod mini to $129 instead of $99. The Apple TV also now costs $199 instead of $129.

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Bungie cuts nearly 300 jobs as Destiny 2 winds down and Marathon takes center stage

Published

on


For years, Bungie kept Destiny 2 online with a big technical footprint, from backend systems for progression and matchmaking to tools for live events and constant content updates. Now, with that pipeline winding down and new games still in early incubation, the studio is cutting back the team that supports…
Read Entire Article
Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

This Is Why Your Smartwatch Is Giving You Anxiety, and What You Can Do About It

Published

on

Whenever I wear a smartwatch, I find that my anxiety increases — specifically, my health anxiety. Also known as hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, this type of anxiety makes me worry that I am or may become ill even when I’m healthy.

What’s ironic is that part of my job involves testing health-monitoring wearables, including fitness trackers and smart rings. While I love exploring this technology and do think it can help you learn more about your body, I have to be careful about how I use it so my anxiety isn’t triggered.

“Healthy adults and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions are increasingly using these devices to manage their health. Whether 24/7 access to health information from a wearable actually helps or potentially harms people is really unclear,” says Dr. Lindsey Rosman, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Cardiovascular Device and Data Science Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Advertisement

When you add in the ability to search your symptoms online or ask an AI chatbot in your wearable’s app about every anxiety-induced health question that pops into your head, it becomes even more difficult to discern between what’s helpful and harmful. 

To help myself and others with health anxiety navigate the world of wearables so we can either enjoy using them or know when it’s time to stop, I reached out to experts for their advice.

1. Turn off health-related alerts

Rosman has observed clinically that it can be beneficial to either scale back or turn off the features that make you anxious. This can be especially helpful for people with pre-existing conditions that are already being treated, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib, an irregular heartbeat), as your wearable’s irregular heart rhythm notifications will only make you anxious and can prompt you to see your doctor when it’s not medically necessary.

Plus, certain medications can affect the accuracy of wearable sensors, provoking false alarms. 

Advertisement

“We published a case report on a patient who performed over 900 EKGs [electrocardiograms or ECGs, which measure the heart’s electrical activity] on her smartwatch in a single year,” says Rosman. While most of the EKGs were normal, inconclusive alerts fueled her anxiety, leading to multiple ER visits, spousal conflict and the need for therapy to reclaim her daily life. The patient had no psychiatric history prior to getting a smartwatch.

An Apple Watch 11 showing the "Possible Hypertension" alert

When you get an unexpected health alert on your device, it can understandably cause panic.

Cole Kan/CNET/Apple

Dr. Karen Cassiday, author of Freedom from Health Anxiety and owner and managing director of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago, says that even patients who don’t have health anxiety can find wearables to be intrusive when they get too many alerts. “They discover they want to be less aware of every moment of their body’s functioning,” she says.

Advertisement

Thankfully, most wearable health features can be turned off completely or customized. 

For instance, Shyamal Patel, SVP of science at Oura, maker of the Oura Ring, shares that the device’s Personalized Activity Goals allow you to choose to see steps instead of calories, adjust your daily activity goal or hide calories completely, which can be necessary for anyone who finds calorie counting triggering or overly rigid. 

Advertisement

2. Avoid checking your device all the time

Referring to a 2024 study she worked on that examined the impact of wearables on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib, Rosman says that about half of the participants were checking their heart rate every day out of habit, not because they felt symptoms. 

Cassidy explains that while people with health anxiety may initially find wearables helpful, compulsively checking to make sure their vitals are normal can accidentally become a form of negative reinforcement that further propels the anxiety.

“Often when I work with anxious people, we try to cut back or eliminate the need to compulsively check for reassurance on their wearables, as well as with ChapGPT or other digital ‘doctors,’” says Cassiday. 

When people refrain from compulsively checking, wearables can provide useful feedback that counters the false belief that something terrible will happen to their health.  

Advertisement

If checking your health metrics causes anxiety, try reducing how often you view them on your device or in its app. Setting an alert to check weekly, at a minimum, could help — especially since it’ll give you a broader picture, making you less likely to hyperfocus on a single data point that seems off. 

You should also avoid checking your wearable’s health information right after you wake up or before you go to bed, as this can set the tone for an anxious day or make it harder to fall asleep. 

If having a screen on your wrist makes it difficult for you to stop checking, a screenless smart ring or fitness tracker such as the Whoop 5.0 may be a better option, since they rely on apps instead of screens.

Advertisement
A close-up of the silver Oura Ring 4 on a pointer finger in front of a white wall.

A screenless smart ring may help you stop compusively checking your device.

Anna Gragert/CNET

“You choose how much or how little you engage with the app, which gives those who might be anxious about their health the option to limit the amount of time they spend with their data,” says Patel.

3. Focus on trends, not one-off metrics

When I asked both Patel and Dr. Jacqueline Shreibati, head of clinical for platforms and devices at Google, how people who wear their devices can reduce health anxiety, they emphasized the importance of tracking trends — not individual metrics.  

“We focus on long-term trends (rather than isolated metrics) to help users maintain a balanced relationship with their data,” says Shreibati. “What being healthy means differs for everyone, and we encourage users to consult their physician if they have any concerns.”

Advertisement

Patel points to the Tags and Trends features in the Oura app. Tags lets you tag lifestyle factors such as travel, alcohol, meditation or late meals, which you can then view in Trends to see how your behavior affects your recovery and sleep over weeks, rather than looking at a single score that may one day seem abnormal.

Sleet tracking Apple Watch Series 11

Instead of viewing a single sleep or stress score, consider looking at that data weekly or monthly.

Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNET

4. Remember that your smartwatch can’t replace a doctor

“Most consumer wearables were originally developed as personal wellness devices, which are not required to demonstrate safety and efficacy like traditional medical devices (e.g., a blood pressure cuff or pacemaker),” Rosman explains. 

Advertisement

Yet we’ve begun using these wearables to monitor our health, using metrics such as heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen, stress, sleep and physical activity. Now, some of these devices have medical-grade sensors, software and algorithms approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to detect irregular heart rhythms, hypertension and sleep apnea.

Despite FDA approval, wearables are simply not doctors, and they cannot provide medical diagnoses or treatment. That’s why it’s essential to understand what your device actually measures.

The ECG feature on many smartwatches is just one example of this. FDA-cleared as it may be, a single-lead ECG that only uses one electrode to record your heart’s electrical activity from your wrist is not the same as the 12-lead, hospital-grade ECG a cardiologist would use. 

While your wearable’s ECG can surface a potential symptom worth investigating with your doctor, it can’t replace a professional or their medical-grade equipment.

Advertisement
apple watch ultra 3 ecg

Performing an ECG on your smartwatch is not the same as having that same measurement taken in a doctor’s office.

Viva Tung/CNET/Apple

The gap is even wider for features including stress and sleep scores, which haven’t been clinically validated because there’s no one single gold standard to validate against. These numerical scores are calculated from bodily signals such as heart rate, temperature, movement and heart rate variability, which tend to correlate with your stress and sleep states. But the translation from raw signal to “your stress score is 74” is more of an educated estimate.

“What you’re seeing is a rough indicator of how your nervous system is functioning, not a medical diagnosis,” Rosman emphasizes.

Advertisement

Patel adds that not all physiological stress is inherently negative. “Some forms of short-term physiological stress can be healthy and adaptive,” he says. “That’s why we aim to pair data with in-app context and insights, so members can better understand what they’re seeing rather than receiving that information in a vacuum.” 

Nonetheless, when you don’t know exactly what your wearable is measuring, a “bad” stress or sleep score can seem scary when it isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, but rather a sign that you may want to have a deeper conversation with your doctor.

5. Get your doctor’s thoughts

Just like you should talk to your doctor before starting a new medication or diet, you should get their thoughts on whether you could benefit from using a wearable.

“Education is probably the most underused tool we have,” Rosman says. 

Advertisement

When you don’t know what a healthy heart rate or ECG looks like, one seemingly atypical reading can send you into a panic. That’s why it’s essential to speak with your doctor so you understand your own baseline and if a wearable makes sense for your current health condition.

As a guide, Rosman provides the following questions you can ask your doctor:

Advertisement
  • What type of wearable should I use? 
  • How often should I check this data? 
  • What are healthy numbers for me? 
  • What do I do when I get an alert? 
  • When should I call the clinic or seek emergency care versus waiting? 

“A fast heart rate after climbing stairs is not the same as a dangerous arrhythmia, but without that context, a notification can feel terrifying,” Rosman adds. “So much wearable-related anxiety comes not from the data itself, but from not knowing what to do with it.”

6. Know when it’s time to remove your device and get help

When asked when someone should consider parting with their wearable or seeing a professional for health anxiety, Cassiday says that it’s similar to what many notice when they keep checking their smartphone for the next text, TikTok or other digital data.  

“If you find yourself interrupting pleasurable activities or your free time to check, or if you feel anxious about not checking, you have a problem,” Cassiday states. 

For instance, if you only stop thinking that you’ll have a heart attack when you check your wearable and see your resting heart rate. Or, put simply, if you only feel at peace after someone or something, such as a wearable reassures you that you’re in good health, it’s time to get professional support. 

Advertisement
An aerial view of a version with blonde hair, a yellow shirt and light-wash jeans talking to a therapist while on a gray couch.

If health anxiety is making it difficult for you to enjoy life, then it’s time to talk to a professional.

Constantinis/Getty Images

To find help, Cassiday recommends using the resources provided by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America or the International OCD Foundation, as health anxiety can be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

7. Consider cognitive behavioral therapy 

When you have health anxiety, the gold standard for care is cognitive behavioral therapy. It involves exposure to health-related worries without any form of reassurance and learning to accept the uncertainty that comes with not knowing our future health status, manner of death or time of death.  

“People need to learn that all the vague symptoms that trigger their health anxiety are just normal variations of normal body functioning and aging,” Cassiday explains. “They have to reframe the symptoms they notice as nothing to examine, discuss or manage and instead trust the facts of their other evidence of good health.”

CBT can help you live in the present instead of spiraling into the anxiety-inducing “What if?” of the future.

Who should and shouldn’t use wearables

Wearables can be great for people who like tracking their fitness to motivate them toward their goals, or for patients and their care teams when medically necessary. Though they usually cost hundreds of dollars, wearables can be less expensive than medical tests. Some are even HSA- or FSA-eligible

Advertisement

“In AFib specifically, being able to correlate your symptoms with actual rhythm data can be genuinely empowering,” Rosman says. She’s observed that the patients who thrive with wearables are those who use the data as information — not as something to fear — and those who don’t participate in 24/7 surveillance.

In Rosman’s 2024 study, two-thirds of AFib patients said their wearable made them feel safer and more in control. Even so, there is still the risk of unintended consequences.

Two fitness tracker watches and a gold Oura Ring on a wrist and finger.

While they can be beneficial, wearables can also come with risks — especially since there isn’t enough research on the subject.

Advertisement

Giselle Castro-Sloboda/CNET

Just as doctors would never prescribe a medication without knowing the potential benefits, risks and how to manage them, wearables should be no different. “The technology has moved so much faster than the science, and we need the scientific evidence from clinical trials to catch up,” Rosman explains. 

Since the evidence isn’t there yet, Rosman is hesitant to say anyone should categorically avoid wearables. 

Despite that, people who are highly anxious about their heart or prone to obsessive symptom monitoring should approach with caution. The same goes for those with conditions involving unpredictable, abrupt symptoms, such as paroxysmal AFib and POTS, because the uncertainty of not knowing when the next episode will hit is stressful enough, and constant monitoring can make it worse.

A note on the science (or lack thereof)

Rosman has conducted research on the connection between wearables and anxiety, including a 2025 review describing the psychological effects of wearables on patients with cardiovascular disease and a 2024 study examining their impact on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib. 

The 2025 review found that while wearables can help promote healthy behaviors and provide data for diagnosis and treatment, they also pose risks, such as adverse psychological reactions. 

In the 2024 study, it was concluded that wearables were connected with higher rates of patients becoming preoccupied with their symptoms, being concerned about their treatments and using both formal and informal health care resources.

Advertisement

On the other hand, a 2021 study that analyzed the 2019 and 2020 US-based Health Information National Trends Survey found that using wearable devices for self-tracking can indirectly reduce psychological distress. Still, misinterpretation of wearable data may cause unnecessary panic and anxiety. 

A 2020 qualitative interview study featuring patients with chronic heart disease also found that while wearables’ data may be a resource for self-care, it can create uncertainty, fear and anxiety.

Ultimately, more studies are needed. 

“Honestly, we don’t have good scientific evidence in this area yet,” says Rosman. “Despite widespread use, there have been no clinical trials I’m aware of that have looked at the benefits and potential health risks of specific wearable health features.”

Advertisement

Rosman’s team plans to be the first to investigate this in patients with pre-existing heart conditions.

Wearables’ impact on our health care system

When wearables cause health anxiety, they can prompt healthy individuals to schedule unnecessary doctor’s appointments. This places a burden on our health care system, which is already experiencing shortages, making it difficult for people who actually require medical attention to access care. 

Rosman’s 2024 study found that those using a wearable sent nearly twice as many patient portal messages to their doctors. Responding to these messages from patients takes time, isn’t reimbursed by insurance and can contribute to burnout.

Advertisement
A person in blue scrubs with long brown hair checking messages on a desktop computer.

When health anxiety caused by wearables prompts people to message their doctors, it can put a strain on the health care system.

MoMo Productions/Getty Images

As a result, Rosman believes we need better systems for managing wearable data in clinical settings before we scale it further: “Wearables are changing how we deliver care in ways we haven’t fully prepared for.”

Wearables can further widen health care inequity due to their cost. 

“These devices are expensive, they were mostly designed and tested in young healthy people and they’re marketed toward higher-income consumers,” Rosman explains. “If we’re not thoughtful about access, wearables could actually widen health disparities rather than close them. That’s the opposite of what we want.”

The bottom line

While wearables have their benefits, there are also risks to consider, especially given the limited research on the subject.

If you purchase a wearable and it triggers health anxiety, you don’t have to use every available feature, wear it constantly or continue to wear it at all. Before you even buy that device, you can arm yourself with anxiety-reducing knowledge by getting your doctor’s expert opinion.  

Advertisement

However, if health anxiety continues to take over your life, it may be time to remove your wearable and seek professional help. 

As for me, writing this piece has been a necessary reminder that, while there’s a lot we can’t control in life, the power is in our hands (or on our wrists or fingers) when it comes to the technology we put on our bodies or invite into our homes. Just like an itchy sweater or a lumpy armchair, we can send the technology that doesn’t serve us packing.  

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

US Government Allows Anthropic Limited Release of ‘Mythos’ AI Model, Saying ‘Appropriate Safeguards are in Place”

Published

on

“The US government has allowed Anthropic to release its powerful Mythos AI model to select companies and organizations,” reports CNN, “revising license requirements after ordering an export block earlier this month in the wake of national security fears.”


Since the export ban earlier in June, “Anthropic has worked with the US government to address risks associated with the Covered Models,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote to the company in a letter dated Friday. In light of progress in that work, Lutnick wrote, “I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model.”

The letter does not include permission for Anthropic to release Fable, a less powerful version of Mythos. “We received notice from the US government that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers,” Anthropic said in a statement…

Conversations between Anthropic and the government are expected to continue into the weekend, with an eye to restoring access to Fable, as well, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Astronomers Find Biggest Super-Puff Planets Yet That Are Lighter Than Cotton Candy

Published

on

Astronomers have discovered two Jupiter-sized exoplanets with densities lower than cotton candy, making them the lightest known worlds of their size. The rare “super-puffs,” located about 1,110 light-years away, are likely composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with follow-up observations by the James Webb Space Telescope expected to probe their atmospheres. The Associated Press reports: [University of Oxford’s George Dransfield] suspects these fluffy, wispy worlds are probably white or blue, depending on whether the skies there are cloudy — no shades of cotton-candy pink. The planets are probably mostly hydrogen and helium, although it will take follow-up observations by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope to confirm their chemical makeup.

Detected by NASA’s Tess satellite over the past decade, these two especially puffy-puffs orbit a star in the southern constellation Volans, known as the flying fish. The researchers studied the planets’ orbits using telescopes on Earth to determine their density, from 1,110 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers). Jupiter, by comparison, is as much as 35 times denser than these two lightweights.

Considered rare in the cosmos, super-puffs are thought to form around the disk of gas and dust around a newborn star where there is more gas than dust. They shed much of the material over time, stripping down even more. NASA’s tally of worlds outside our solar system currently stands at nearly 6,300 confirmed. Fewer than 40 are super-puffs, according to Dransfield. The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Watch YouTube On A Game Boy Color With A Special Cartridge

Published

on

There’s no questioning [Throaty Mumbo]’s uncanny skill at answering questions that nobody ever asked, such as whether it’s possible to watch YouTube videos on a Nintendo Game Boy Color handheld gaming system.

Of course the answer here is a resounding ‘sorta’, loosely defined by what you mean with ‘watch’ and ‘video’ exactly. For the impatient there’s the GitHub project page with the project summary, along with a detailed video containing hijinks and a playback demo on real Game Boy Color hardware with the cobbled-together GBCTube cartridge.

The nice thing about these cartridge-based gaming systems is that you get direct access to the system’s hardware via the cartridge bus, with for systems like the GBC a basic cartridge PCB readily available if you’re feeling that prototyping itch.

Such a cartridge breakout board for the GBC was thus used as the core of this project, with an ESP32-C6 acting solely as Wi-Fi bridge for the RP2350B MCU which handles basic player firmware and bridging duty between the GBC and the streamed video data from the host PC. It’s the latter does the heavy lifting of wrangling the YouTube experience into something that sort of works on the GBC’s amazing, very vibrant, backlight-free 160×144 resolution color LCD.

Advertisement

With the cartridge inserted you can search for a video title on the GBC, select a video which is then downloaded with yt-dlp on the host PC and prepared for streaming. Audio is handled by the RP2350B to free up CPU cycles on the GBC, for which a separate speaker is slapped into the cartridge for high-fidelity mostly-synced audio.

Perhaps the most fascinating question that one is left with is whether a more powerful Espressif MCU like e.g. the ESP32-S31 could combine all these tasks into a single package. Not because there’s a particular reason to do so, but more out of sheer morbid curiosity, perhaps.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2025