If there’s one thing that stops people using their smart rings over the long term, it’s the battery life. After all, they’re so unobtrusive, it’s easy to forget to drop it on the charging plate every few days. It doesn’t take long for your pricey gadget to become little more than a very expensive piece of jewelry. It’s one of many maladies Ultrahuman is looking to address with the advent of its new Pro, a smart ring boasting up to 15 days of battery life. It even ships with a fancy battery case, which itself includes enough power to last it 45 days, making it easier to keep re-charged on the go.

Ultrahuman Ring Pro hasn’t just got a far bigger battery, it’s been re-engineered from the ground up. The company’s Bhuvan Srinivasan explained the older hardware had been pushed to its limit, especially in terms of the data it could process. Consequently, the Pro is equipped with a dual core processor with on-device machine learning to better crunch the numbers your body is throwing out. Its memory has also been increased, holding up to 250 days of data before it needs to sync with your smartphone. As well as improvements to durability, the new ring is also easier to cut apart in the hopefully rare event your finger, or its battery, begins to swell.

I’ll admit, having seen a prototype Pro Charger in person back in January, that it’s the prettiest way to re-juice a smart ring I’ve ever seen. Whereas Samsung and Oura have both opted for discreet, ring box-style hardware, Ultrahuman made something designed to sit on your nightstand. It’s not taking up space just for show, either, since it includes the aforementioned battery, LED charge indicator, speaker and haptics. It’s also got the ability to diagnose and address firmware issues to eliminate worries around firmware issues bricking devices.

At the same time, Ultrahuman is pulling the covers off Jade, its new “real time biointelligence AI.” The company promises Jade will be able to “pull real-time actionable insights, and even start breathwork or trigger Afib detection.” Jade is expected to get new features over time, with some examples being ordering good, changing your room temperature or flagging potential health issues. The idea is that Jade will keep a constant eye on your health, pulling in data from the ring, M1 continuous glucose monitor and environmental stats from your Ultrahuman Home.

Naturally, we’ll be getting in the Pro to test and will give our opinions on how effective all of this is when we’ve spent a month or two actually using it. But if you’d rather not wait and you’re based outside the US, you can pre-order the Ultrahuman Ring Pro right now, for $479, with shipments beginning in March. If you already have an Ultrahuman Ring, you can also get a trade-in deal to help cut the cost of the new model.

In the past year, Intel has lost its CSO, the CEO of products and the head of AI.

Intel Foundry’s senior vice-president and general manager Kevin O’Buckley is leaving the company to join Qualcomm, where he will be leading the company’s semiconductor operations.

Naga Chandrasekaran, whose remit was expanded to include Intel Foundry months earlier, will be leading the entire segment now, according to a statement from an Intel spokesperson.

In his new role, effective from 2 March, O’Buckley will be reporting directly to Qualcomm’s executive vice-president, chief financial officer and chief operations officer Akash Palkhiwala.

“Kevin brings deep operational expertise, proven commercial leadership, and decades of experience scaling complex semiconductor operations and delivering custom silicon products across data centre and edge devices,” said Palkhiwala.

“His leadership will further strengthen our global operations as we continue to deliver industry-leading products with high-performance, low-power computing, AI and connectivity at scale.”

O’Buckley served at Intel for less than two years, prior to which he led chipmaker Marvell as its senior vice-president. O’Buckley has also spent more than 17 years working across various roles in IBM.

“We thank Kevin O’Buckley for his contributions to foundry services and wish him the very best as he pursues an opportunity outside the company,” an Intel spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware.

“Intel Foundry remains one of Intel’s highest strategic priorities, and under Naga Chandrasekaran’s leadership the organisation is focused on disciplined execution and delivering for customers.”

Last September, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Bloomberg that Intel’s production technology isn’t good enough currently for it to use as a supplier.

Qualcomm develops chips for mobile phones and computers. It is behind the Snapdragon series of processors for mobiles, laptops and extended reality sets.

Lip Bu-Tan has been attempting to flatten executive leadership, cut costs and secure new customers for Intel ever since he took over as CEO last March. Since then, the company has seen some major leadership exits.

In June, chief strategy officer Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah left the company, which followed with chief executive of products Michelle Johnston Holthaus exiting the company in September after more than three decades of service.

While November saw Intel’s chief technology and AI officer Sachin Katti leaving to join OpenAI to build compute infrastructure for “artificial general intelligence”. Tan has taken over the company’s AI and advanced technologies groups.

The US government currently holds a 10pc stake in Intel, while Nvidia holds $5bn of the company’s stock and SoftBank invested $2bn in the company.

Intel has been closely collaborating with SambaNova, an up and coming chipmaker chaired by Tan. SambaNova recently announced a $350m raise and a strategic investment from Intel to accelerate an Intel-powered AI cloud.

Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies announced a €125m investment to upgrade its Cork city site and create 300 new jobs.

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This marks the seventh co-founder exit since xAI was founded in 2023.

Toby Pohlen is the latest co-founder to leave xAI, announcing his decision to resign just weeks after two others left.

The Elon Musk-owned xAI lost three co-founder in the weeks after his space-tech company SpaceX bought xAI for a reported $250bn. The combined business is worth an estimated $1.25trn, and could gain more after a planned initial public offering this year.

xAI had previously acquired X, the social media platform, last March.

In a post on X, Pohlen thanked Elon Musk for taking him on board. “I’ve learnt more about execution, speed, and product perfectionism than I could ever have imagined. Thanks for everything,” he said. Musk responded, “Thanks for helping get xAI to where it is.”

Pohlen is the seventh co-founder to exit xAI in three years, following Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu, who left earlier this month. Kyle Kosic left in 2024, followed by Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy in 2025.

Greg Yang, another co-founder, announced last month that he would be stepping down after being diagnosed with Lyme disease. Pohlen had worked in Google DeepMind as a research engineer for more than six years before founding xAI.

The flurry of exits leaves behind Musk, Manuel Kroiss, Zihang Dai, Guodong Zhang and Ross Nordeen at the company.

Earlier this month, Ireland’s data protection watchdog launched a “large-scale” inquiry into X following the Grok ‘nudification’ fiasco. This investigation followed separate similar inquiries launched by the  European Commission and the UK government.

Meanwhile, a year-long inquiry by French authorities has expanded to probe Grok’s possible role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes. California also launched a similar investigation into X and Grok’s parent company xAI last month.

Alongside this, the EU is continuing with a separate, years-long investigation into X to assess if the platform mitigated risks stemming from its recommender systems, including the impact of the recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.

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from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

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In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Ben is joined by Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, a podcast that makes sense of the rapidly changing world of tech. Together, they discuss:

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Filed Under: age verification, ai, artificial intelligence, casey newton, content moderation

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Hair loss isn’t always dramatic. It can be incremental. You start noticing a bit more scalp in harsh bathroom lighting; a tiny bald spot when you tie your hair up in a ponytail. The shower drain is more clogged than usual. Not long ago, hair loss treatments meant topical remedies, supplements, or a flight to Turkey. Luckily, red light therapy brings the potential for hair regrowth into your home—no clinical appointment required.

Beyond skin rejuvenation, research suggests red light therapy can help energize hair follicles, increase blood circulation in the scalp, reduce inflammation, and lower dihydrotestosterone levels—a hormone that causes hair loss and thinning. Red light therapy also supports adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production, which helps provide oxygen and blood flow to the scalp and triggers follicles to remain in the hair growth phase.

To determine the best red light therapy for hair growth, I tapped three WIRED tech reviewers who’ve dealt with hair loss themselves. We assessed red light therapy caps, hands-free helmets with full scalp coverage, and low-level laser therapy or photobiomodulation devices for 16 weeks. Along the way, we reviewed the research, spoke with dermatologists, and tracked ease of use. These are the favorites that produced meaningful results and earned our trust.

Be sure to check out our other hair care guides, including Best Dry Shampoos, Best Heat Protectant Sprays, and Best Hair Dryers.

Best Red Light Helmet

CurrentBody’s LED Hair Growth Helmet is a wearable, cord-free, Bluetooth-enabled device aimed at improving hair’s density, thickness, and overall condition. Each panel on the helmet has 12 red lights (120 total), which are on a spectrum of 620 to 660 nanometers (nm). The 620-nm red light helps improve scalp health by promoting circulation, and the 660-nm red light penetrates deeper, reaching through the epidermis and dermis to the hypodermis, where it stimulates growth and repair at the follicle root. According to CurrentBody, you only need to use the device for 10 minutes a day, and you’ll see results within 12 weeks.

My hair grows famously slow. I got a pixie cut in the spring of 2011, and my hair did not touch my shoulders until the end of 2013. My hair is also super fine. It tangles easily and often breaks off (my ends are chronically dry and split). After 12 weeks, I didn’t notice a huge difference in length (and I got a haircut halfway through testing), but I did notice that my hair seemed to be sprouting new follicles along my scalp and sideburn area in particular. I started to see small baby hairs along my hairline that I had never seen before. My stylist commented that my hair felt thicker, and I noticed less breakage and hair caught in bristles when brushing. My balding roommate also tested it (although not daily like me) and said that his hair felt thicker and that there was new growth around the scalp.

The helmet comes in two sizes: medium for a skull circumference of 21.3 to 23.2 inches, or large, for 23.3 to 25 inches. (I opted for medium, and it was too large for my head size.) The device sits on a base and is charged via a USB-C cord. It takes about three hours to fully charge, and it stays on a single charge for about a week. The device is powered on by the press of the single button located under the charging port. The circular earmuffs protect sensitive ears with a cushy, removable faux leather cloth, and they can be adjusted several inches up or down to ensure a comfortable fit. The screen on the right earmuff indicates the time left in the treatment session, and the helmet automatically turns off when the 10 minutes are up. You can also connect the device to Bluetooth and play any type of music or video while wearing it, because God forbid I be left alone with my thoughts for 10 minutes a day. Just make sure your hair is clean and dry before use.

My only complaints are that the ear covers aren’t the easiest to adjust while wearing and would oftentimes pull out my hair while I removed or adjusted the helmet. Nevertheless, this is the best red light therapy for hair growth. Just you wait, I’ll look like Fabio on the cover of a romance novel by next year. See full review here. —Molly Higgins