• Private drone companies can now request access to US Army testing ranges
• Companies no longer need existing government partnerships before requesting range access
• Five military facilities across America and Morocco are joining the programme

Private drone companies without existing government contracts can now request access to the US Army test ranges nationwide.

The arrangement removes a requirement for companies to have existing government partnerships before requesting access to military ranges.

Quick summary? 

Do you believe in the power of positive journaling, but for some reason, you can’t take out the time or the effort to put pen to paper? If the answer is yes, and the above question describes your predicament, Adiaro may have a neat solution for you. The company makes jewelry in a whole bunch of styles and colors, but the center of it all is the charm gemstone that comes equipped with an NFC tag. 

All you need to do is tap your phone against the gem, and it opens a digital journal for you that is also linked to your Google or Apple account. Does it work? Yeah, if you mind the end result, and not the medium. It comes in a variety of gem choices, too. So, if you are someone who believes in the healing power of certain gems, consider this bracelet as the perfect hybrid solution that asks about your mood, lets you vent, use it as a diary, and build an emotional calendar. 

What is this? 

It’s a bracelet that wants to blend the spiritual side of gem-based healing with the scientifically proven benefits of journaling. How? Well. at the heart of the gemstone is an NFC tag, and when you tap your phone on it, you get access to a web-based journal app. It works pretty reliably, though, on a few occasions, I’ve found myself inadvertently triggering the notification by simply placing the phone near the Adiaro bracelet in my pocket, or on the table. 

I tried the Adiaro Tiger Eye Balanced Chain bracelet, but you can also pick between amethyst, obsidian, white and golden jade, rose quartz, and turquoise options. You can also try an entirely different style with the bead-heavy grounded bracelet, and separately purchase the gem charms in different shapes and colors at $19 apiece. 

Attaching them is pretty easy, thanks to a magnetic clasp system that looks like a chrome bead and separates into two halves. As far as the build quality goes, the Balance chain feels pretty high-end. The metal finish is pretty sharp, and there are no loose ends or poor craftsmanship visible on this one. 

How does it work? 

Well, think of this bracelet as more of a hidden digital diary than a piece of jewelry. As soon as you tap your phone against the gem charm, it triggers a notification that subsequently opens a web-based digital journal app. At the top, you see a thoughtful quote that varies on a day-to-day basis.

Underneath, you can pick between five different moods to reflect your emotional state in that moment. The spectrum starts at “overwhelmed” and slowly progresses to “amazing.” And finally, there’s a dedicated text field where you can describe your mood in 800 characters. 

It’s a tad limiting, especially considering the fact that voice-typing on a phone is a lot quicker and far more convenient than writing in a diary using a pen. Once you are done with your digital journaling, it is saved as a log that is synced with your Google Drive or iCloud Drive. 

All your mood entries and ruminations are recorded. The Adiaro app creates a progressive map that shows how your mood has changed over the past few days and what kind of thoughts occupied your mind. I like the approach. It’s almost like taking a look into the past few days and assessing how your mental state and energy levels have been at a certain time of the day, or midway through a certain activity.

The broad idea is that, aside from just journaling through a day, you can also check the mood calendar and try to find patterns, depending on the details you have shared in your notes and how your mental state has been. It may not work for everyone. But for some, it can prove to be beneficial.

For example, over a span of three weeks, I noticed that my mood affirmations were usually amazing at noon, and I was high on energy and willing to take on challenging assignments. As the evening passed, I was generally tired, even though my energy levels were consistent, but I felt a certain sense of stress. 

Acting on the data at hand, I tried to adjust my work hours and shifted low-priority tasks to the evening slot. It was not a magical cure, but it did help me accomplish a few pending tasks that I kept postponing and felt stressed about. Your mileage might vary depending on how you journal and what kind of actionable insights you can get from the mood calendar.

What about the science? 

I have never maintained a diary for journaling, nor have I poured my heart out on an obscure blog. But I know a lot of people who do it, and I see them feel good about it. One of my friends says it’s an escape route from the events that give them anxiety and offers a safe space to vent it all out. Broadly, they see it as a channel of relief. 

Adiaro is building on that relief pathway. It might sound like a placebo, or make-believe kind of solution, but there is scientific backing behind the approach. A research paper published in the peer-reviewed JMIR Mental Health journal, positive affect journaling (PAJ) can tone down mental distress and trigger and enhance well-being, serving as an effective intervention. 

As part of a randomized trial, patients living with different medical conditions and elevated anxiety symptoms were asked to perform a 15-minute web-based journaling task. The task was performed thrice a week, and the whole experiment lasted 12 weeks. At the end of the trial, the team found that web-based positive affect journaling was linked to lowered mental distress among the participants, lower anxiety, and perceived stress. 

It also said to have triggered greater perceived personal resilience and encouraged social integration. “Overall, the findings from this study suggest that PAJ has potential utility as an intervention for managing mental distress, particularly elevated anxiety symptoms, and other aspects of well-being among general medical patients. This is consistent with, and extends, prior research on positive writing interventions as a way to improve aspects of health and well-being,” says the research paper that was published in 2018.  

Another paper published in the Family Medicine and Community Health journal arrived at a similar conclusion after an analysis of multiple clinical trials and peer-reviewed papers that explored the link between journaling and mental health. Broadly, it sees journaling as a low-cost, low-risk method to manage mental health symptoms, but not as a replacement for proper medical care. 

“This meta-analysis provides further affirmation that journaling as an intervention has merit and can be an efficacious adjunct when prescribed and implemented properly. The findings of this study can be applied in primary care practice by using journaling as a low-risk, low-resource intensive adjunct to standard therapy for patients with mental health concerns,” notes the research paper.   

Does that mean Adiaro’s smart jewelry is one of those helpful solutions described in scientific research on the benefits of journaling? Not explicitly, but it gets pretty close to the fundamental. At the end of the day, it’s a journaling solution that also comes with the added benefit of a mood calendar. Only this time, instead of opening a diary, you tap a phone against the bracelet’s jewel and tap on a screen. 

Should you buy? 

If you are someone who is not averse to the idea of wearing a bracelet on a daily basis and want to give journaling a try, Adiaro’s bracelet is worth a try. It looks gorgeous, doesn’t ask you to pay for a subscription, and doesn’t even require an app download. All your journals are neatly synced to your Google account, and the mood calendar comes in handy without slapping you with a learning curve.

If you believe in the power of positive journaling, you should get one. The only caveat is that it costs nearly as much as a fitness band, and some of them actually come with guided meditation exercises. They don’t quite let you do the journaling part, but they offer a lot more value, especially if you’re someone who also wants to keep an eye on your body vitals and track your exercises. Alternatively, you can just try Apple’s Journal app on the iPhone, a mood tracker app, or have an AI chatbot like Gemini build your own mood dashboard in a few minutes.

How we tested 

I tested the Adiaro bracelet as a smart journal for a period of three weeks. In that span, I wore it on a daily basis and used it to log my mood and jot down my thoughts. I did not bind myself to a fixed routine for journaling, and I only did it when I felt the need to note down my positive thoughts and tired ruminations. I used an iPhone 17 Pro and used my Google account to sync and save my journal notes.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) 

Is it customizable? 

Yes, you can get it in a variety of styles, colors, and gemstone choices. 

What sizes does it come in? 

It offers free size adjustment. The metallic band can be adjusted to fit wrist sizes from 15 to 22 centimeters (5.9 to 8.7 inches).

Can you change the charm gemstone? 

Yes, the bracelet comes with a magnetic stainless steel charm system that lets you easily swap the gemstone.

OpenAI has launched Computer History, a ChatGPT feature that records clicks, keystrokes, keyboard shortcuts and app switches on macOS to build a searchable memory. The memory files are stored locally as unencrypted plain text, and the feature is not available in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK.

OpenAI has given ChatGPT a record of what you do on your Mac. Computer History logs clicks, keystrokes, keyboard shortcuts and app switches through the operating system’s accessibility framework, then turns them into a searchable memory the assistant can draw on.

It is narrower than it sounds. The feature takes no screenshots, no screen recordings, no microphone input and no system audio, and private browsing is excluded.

That restraint is a deliberate correction. Computer History replaces Chronicle, the Codex feature that captured the screen to build context, and it swaps images for input events.

One thing did not change. The memory files are plain-text Markdown held locally without encryption, so any program running under the same macOS account could read them.

Consent is layered more carefully than most launches. On Business and Enterprise workspaces an administrator has to enable it, the individual user has to agree separately, and Memories has to be switched on.

Users also get real controls. Apps and websites can be added to include or exclude lists, and recording can be paused from the menu bar.

Retention is short at the raw end. Temporary event files sit on the machine for 48 hours before deletion, and OpenAI says it processes them on its servers without keeping them afterwards unless legally required.

Training is where the line gets soft. OpenAI says the memory files are not used to train models, but that when memories surface as context in later chats, those chat contents may still become training data depending on a user’s settings.

The company’s own documentation is unusually frank about the risks. It flags heightened exposure to prompt injection, advises against using the feature with communication apps unless everyone involved has agreed, echoing a problem the industry has yet to solve around recording other people, and recommends excluding anything handling health, financial or personal data.

Europeans cannot try any of it. The feature is unavailable in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

• India is replacing the Su-30MKI’s ageing Russian radar with Virupaksha
• The new radar could detect conventional fighters 300 to 400 kilometres away
• Virupaksha is expected to detect stealthier aircraft beyond 200 kilometres

India’s Su-30MKI fleet, built on a Russian airframe design, is now getting a distinctly homegrown upgrade to its detection system.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation is developing a new radar called Virupaksha to replace the aircraft’s ageing Russian-origin unit.

It used to be a rite of passage to build some sort of AM radio receiver. Many people started with a crystal radio, of course, but you’d graduate to maybe a TRF or superhet design. FM radio projects were not as common, because demodulating an FM signal was harder, as was making things work in the 100 MHz range. These days, though, you can get everything on a chip like the TEA5767, and [turtushig22-blip] has an open design that uses that device on a breakout board, a display, a knob, and an external amplifier. An ESP-32 pulls it together. You can see two videos about the project below.

Unlike older FM radio designs, the TEA5767 doesn’t require any adjustments. RF goes in, and stereo audio goes out. You can control the device through I2C or a 3-wire serial interface.

Software-wise, you send a five-byte control word and the chip sends back five status bytes. You don’t set the frequency directly, but provide a PLL divisor. For example, with a 32 kHz reference crystal, setting 100.1 MHz would be: 4*(100.1 MHz + 0.225 MHz)/0.032768 MHz = (about) 12247.

The radio uses a 225 kHz IF and can autonomously seek stations. You can select whether the search is up or down, and the minimum acceptable signal strength. One unusual feature: the TEA5767 can select the positive or negative mixer output, which might be useful for image rejection in some cases.

The output is purely analog, and there’s no RDS/RBDS decoder. So don’t expect station information on the OLED display. Still, a nice, easy FM radio build. Naturally, not the first TEA5767 build that we’ve seen. Or even the second.

Dario Amodei wrote on X that the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that they have not yet delivered on their promises, and that only genuine breakthroughs will win public trust. It lands as Anthropic prepares a listing that backers expect to value it at $2trn.

Dario Amodei has conceded the case against his own industry. “The most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world,” Anthropic’s chief executive wrote on X on Saturday.

His prescription is blunter than the admission. “At this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is more a cliché than it is inspiring, and most people think it is deceptive,” he wrote. “The thing that will work is actually curing cancer.”

The timing gives it weight. Anthropic is weeks from a listing its backers expect to value the company at $2trn in October, a price that rests almost entirely on what the technology will do rather than what it has done.

The public evidence supports his premise. Pew found half of American adults more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, against 10% who were more excited, up from 37% concerned when the question was first asked in 2021.

He does not accept that his own warnings caused it. “I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative,” he wrote, pointing to Machines of Loving Grace, his 2024 essay arguing that AI could transform the world for the better.

His explanation is broader and harder to test. Public distrust of AI companies, he argued, reflects decades of scepticism towards corporations generally, and “AI is just the latest iteration of it.”

Others were unconvinced that breakthroughs are enough. An OpenAI employee replied that the pharmaceutical industry delivers advances constantly and remains among the least trusted sectors there is.

People will judge AI companies on more than results, she wrote, listing pricing, access, lobbying, opacity, how the gains are shared and who ends up holding the power.

Yann LeCun made the argument Anthropic is least comfortable with. The only way forward is AI that is “widely available, shared, and open,” the former Meta chief AI scientist wrote, a position Anthropic rejects for its frontier models while Meta presses Washington the other way.

Amodei ended with a schedule. Anthropic hopes for “incredible results in the coming years and some early glimmers in the coming months,” which puts the listing comfortably ahead of the glimmers.

Google has added some smart theft-detection features to Android in recent years.

How to Enable Anti-Theft Features On Android?

How Can You Prevent Thieves from Turning Off Your Device?

photoschmidt/Shutterstock

Stripe has finalized a deal to acquire OpenRouter, according to a new report in Bloomberg.

OpenRouter helps customers to select different AI models to perform different tasks, depending on their specific needs and budget. The company announced in May that it had raised a $113 million Series B, at a reported $1.3 billion valuation. (Investors include Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, and Alphabet’s Capital G.)

At the time, OpenRouter CEO Alex Atallah described the company as the equivalent of Stripe for AI, because it provides customers with a single access point for different systems and prevents lock-in. The startup also claimed to have 8 million global users and to provide access to more than 400 models.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Stripe and OpenRouter were in acquisition talks. Now, Bloomberg said those discussions have led to a deal price of more than $7 billion.

A Stripe spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.