😸 $99 friend

Hello! Happy Hump Day. Is it just me, or is this week going super fast? In today’s digest, I’m covering a new wearable that wants to be your friend. But first…

Some headlines: 

🍎 According to a leak, this is what the next iPhone will look like. 

🤖 Meta’s AI is displaying some pretty significant hallucinations.

📱 Nothing has revealed its latest flagship phone, the Nothing 2A. 

📹 Meta has scrapped its celebrity AI feature less than a year after its launch.

Loneliness is one of the most pressing issues people face today. According to Cross River Therapy, 61% of young people in the US report feeling chronically lonely. Depending on who you ask, the problem is caused by any range of factors, from social media to work-life balance to post-COVID ramifications. What isn’t clear, though, is the solution. 

That’s why Avi Schiffman built Friend. The Harvard dropout who won Webby Person of the Year for his efforts in building the first global COVID tracker was sitting in a Tokyo high-rise, talking to his prototype AI assistant when he realized it could do almost anything for him. Still, it couldn’t be what he needed then, and that was a friend. 

Friend is a $99 AI-powered wearable designed to act as a friend, a buddy, or a confidant when you need one the most. It’s a chatbot that lives inside a pendant that you can interact with just by pushing a button. According to Avi, the more you interact with the AI, the more it develops its own personality, with the goal of becoming almost human. It’s always on listening, and while you can interact with your voice, the device can only respond via text. 

The launch video went somewhat viral on X last night, with some mixed opinions. Throughout it, you can see different people interact with their friends' devices. In one instance, it listens to a user's frustration while gaming and texts them to say, “You’re getting trashed. It’s embarrassing.” Check it out for yourself. It has some black mirror vibes, but it’s a pretty entertaining launch video. 

It’s already raised $2.5 million from Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas and Morning Brew CEO and co-founder Austin Rief, among others. Approximately $1.8 million of that was spent on buying the domain name friend.com. 

DEVELOPER TOOLS

Cyclops is an open-source dev tool that simplifies Kubernetes with an easy-to-use UI, making it less intimidating.

GitHub Glimpse helps contributors find the most recent issues in popular open-source projects, making it easier to contribute.

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS 

Dumb Phone helps you avoid unnecessary distractions during work by turning your smartphone into a dumb phone. It swaps out your home screen for a more minimalist approach with only a few essential apps.

Slack AI is a suite of features that helps you summarize conversations and tap into your workspace’s knowledge hub, enabling you to work smarter and more efficiently.

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