Transcription and note-taking has emerged as one of the prime use cases for wearable gadgets as AI models advance voice-to-text tech. We're even seeing some differentiation, with startups like Plaud and Pocket specializing on products that can record and summarize meetings. Others like Friend, Omi, and Amazon-owned Bee are exploring form factors like pendants and wristbands to give people a way to record interactions and their daily lives. There's been a bit of controversy around that latter aspect, as people understandably don't want to be recorded by someone without consent. A startup called Taya by former Apple design engineer Elena Wagenmans is trying to address these privacy concerns with a device that records only the user's voice. As a bonus, the device masquerades as jewelry: It's designed to be worn as a nifty pendant. Priced at $89 for preorders, the Taya Necklace features a button that you can tap to start and stop recording; the mic is off by default. The startup also ships an accompanying iOS app that saves your notes and lets you ask questions about them through an AI-based chat feature....
Kevin Mandia, who founded the cybersecurity startup Mandiant in 2004 and sold it to Google for $5.4 billion in 2022, has launched a new AI-native cybersecurity startup with what the company claims is a record-breaking funding round. The new outfit, called Armadin, has raised $189.9 million in combined seed and Series A funding led by Accel, with participation from GV, Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, 8VC, Ballistic Ventures, and the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel, it said. The company claims the combined total is a record for a security startup at that early a stage, though it isn't disclosing its valuation. While other security startups have raised even slightly bigger Series A rounds, we couldn't find another one that did so out of the gate. In 2019, for example, password-management company 1Password and privacy compliance company OneTrust both raised $200 million in Series A funding. But 1Password was already 14 years old at the time and OneTrust was three years old and already in growth mode....
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The Netherlands' Defence Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) published details about a 'large-scale global' hacking campaign against Signal and WhatsApp users. The two agencies accused 'Russian state actors' of using phishing and social engineering techniques ' rather than malware ' to take over accounts on the two messaging apps. In the case of Signal, the hackers are masquerading as the app's support team and messaging targets directly with warnings of suspicious activity, 'a possible data leak,' or of attempts to access the target's private data. If the target falls for it, the hackers ask for a verification code sent via SMS ' the hackers themselves request this code from Signal ' as well as the targets' PIN code. The hackers then use the verification and PIN codes to register a new device with a new phone number, impersonate the target, and potentially access their contacts, according to the report. Also, the target gets locked out of their account, but can re-register their number....
