Renato Sanchez, PT, DPT, C.S.C.S., a physical therapist from Bespoke Treatments San Diego recommends first asking yourself why you’re considering a massage gun in the first place.

"What are you looking to get out of one? Is it for recovery, pain relief, or helping you reach your fitness goals?" Depending on your answer, different features may matter more or less to you.

To learn more about what to look for in a massage gun, we spoke with Pham and Josh Orendorf, a physical therapist, certified personal trainer and the owner of Paceline Physical Therapy, in Franklin, Tennessee.

“The three most important things for me are reliability, noise, and battery life,” says Orendorf. “I need something that I know is well-made and won’t malfunction during operation, especially because I’m using it on injured athletes." Noise is the next most important factor, because you don't want your massager to drown out everything else whenever you use it, he explains.

Reliability: Orendorf notes that reliability is still key and that it’s worth investing in a legitimate brand with high-quality standards rather than a knockoff. “Be prepared to spend at least $250 to $350 for a quality product,” he says. “I would be very suspect of guns in the $100 range.”

Noise: Pham agrees that keeping treatment quiet is a major priority. “Personally, noise to me is number one,” says Pham. “I want to be able to use the massage guns in public, and having it sound like a power tool would make it unusable.”

Battery life: Next up is battery life, as Orendorf says he also can’t have guns dying in the middle of treatment. He says that he expects a massage gun to last several full days without requiring a charge. “You’ll also want to be able to throw the gun in your bag or take it on a weekend trip without worrying about finding an outlet,” he says.

Power and speed: Sufficient power and speed is essential to effectively penetrate the muscles and promote blood flow. Look for a massage gun with a high percussive force and adjustable speed settings so you can deliver adequate force to different muscles.

Attachments: Different attachments can provide different massage techniques and sensations that may be suitable for different muscles. Look for a massage gun that comes with a variety of attachments to target different muscle groups and areas of the body.

Portability: A portable and lightweight massage gun is ideal, especially if you plan to use it on the go or travel with it. Consider the weight, size, and the case included.

Additional accessories and features: Of course, even the best guns leave room for improvement. Some options come with convenient travel cases and charging stands—something Orendorf would like to see more products offer. He also mentions that dishwasher-safe attachment heads would make for easier cleaning. And, as the market continues to progress, he hopes for smaller (yet still powerful) designs and Bluetooth app integration.

Aug 15 (Reuters) - Amazon.com (AMZN.O) said on Tuesday its online pharmacy will automatically apply manufacturer-sponsored coupons to more than 15 insulin and diabetes medicines to help patients access discounts pledged by the drug industry.

With the new program, patients using Amazon Pharmacy will no longer have to search for and manually enter coupons from the three largest insulin makers, Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), Eli Lilly (LLY.N), and Sanofi (SASY.PA), to lower the cost of their insulin to as little as $35 for a month's supply, the company said.

Novo, Lilly and Sanofi announced in March that they would slash their insulin prices by at least 70% by or in 2024, but a report from Senator Elizabeth Warren released last month said some patients were finding it difficult to get already discounted generic insulin from pharmacies at the promised lower price.

Despite Lilly lowering the list price of its Insulin Lispro to $25 per vial in May, patients were still being quoted as much as $330 for the medicine, were not being told about cheaper options when they went to pharmacies, and were finding it difficult to use Lilly's savings program, Warren's report found.

Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy's Chief Medical Officer, said the report highlighted the need to make it easier for patients to get their insulin at the lowest possible prices.

"It's not easy to actually figure out how to get that low cost, even though manufacturers and Congress have moved towards that direction. Transparency here is really key," he said.

Amazon Pharmacy will also automatically apply available discounts to diabetes-related medical devices from manufacturers Dexcom and Insulet, including continuous glucose monitors and pumps, as well as to other cardiometabolic medicines such as Novo's powerful weight-loss drug Wegovy.

American Diabetes Association Chief Executive Officer Charles Henderson said Amazon's automated discounting would help the 37 million Americans with diabetes more easily access the treatments they need.

"We want those in the diabetes community to be able to make informed decisions about their diabetes care and medication costs," he said.

Amazon has worked to lure customers away from more established pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens since launching its healthcare business in late 2020, announcing this month that it had doubled its active pharmacy users over the past year.

"Customers have got a lot of choices out there, and they're going to choose what's best for them. So, we're going to create options that gives them access to these medications," Amazon Pharmacy Vice President John Love told Reuters.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

By Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, a smart home reviewer who’s been testing connected gadgets since 2013. Previously a writer for Wirecutter, Wired, and BBC Science Focus.
Amazon will start its Matter journey slowly, bringing support for the new smart home standard to 17 Echo devices in December. But this first rollout will only be Matter over Wi-Fi (no Thread, yet), compatible only with Android phones, and cover just three device types: smart plugs, smart bulbs, and smart switches. Amazon announced the news at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam this week and says it will expand the rollout to iOS and Thread early next year, when it will also add more of the device types Matter supports.
The company, which is a founding member of the new smart home interoperability standard, also announced that Matter device makers will need to go through Amazon’s Works With Alexa program to get the WWA badge on their product pages. But they can do this in tandem with Matter certification. If a device is Matter certified, it will work with Alexa, regardless of whether it has the WWA certification. 
“This is an effort unprecedented in scale and complexity. It’s a big deal, and we need to make sure it goes smoothly.”
Amazon also announced a collaboration with Samsung SmartThings that will make it easy to set up Matter devices on one platform and port them to the other without having to set them up again. This is similar to the collaboration with Google that Samsung announced last month. It’s an extra layer of interoperability on top of Matter’s multi-admin feature, which allows all Matter devices to be controlled by any Matter-compatible app.
Here’s the list of Echo speakers that will become Matter controllers next month: Echo Dot (fifth-gen), Echo Dot (fifth-gen) with Clock, Echo (fourth-gen), Echo Dot (third-gen, 2018 release), Echo Studio, Echo Show 8 (second-gen, 2021 release), Echo Show 10 (third-gen), Echo Show 5 (second-gen, 2021 release), Echo Dot (third-gen) with Clock, Echo Dot (fourth-gen) with Clock, Echo Show 5, Echo (v3), Echo Dot (fourth-gen), Echo Input, Echo Flex, Echo Plus (v2), Echo Show 8.
Once the free firmware arrives, if you have an Android phone, you should be able to add any Matter-compatible device to any compatible Matter app on your smartphone, with the Echo being the controller. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung’s SmartThings are all slated to be Matter controller apps on Android. 
We are in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here, though, as hardware devices are starting to get updates, but we are still waiting on software support from some apps. Apple has added Matter support to its Home app and OS in iOS 16.1, as has Samsung for SmartThings and Galaxy devices. We’re still waiting on Google and now Amazon for iOS. It’s my understanding that this should largely resolve itself in the next three to four months, by which point all the platforms will be on board with Matter and ready to go.
We are in a chicken-and-egg situation as hardware devices become Matter compatible, but we are still waiting on software support from apps
Why it’s taking so long, however, and why we have to wait for Thread and iOS support for Matter on Alexa’s platform is down to caution. “We’re bringing Matter support to well over 100 million devices across 30 Echo and Eero devices,” Chris DeCenzo, a senior principal engineer at Amazon and the company’s CSA board director, explained in an interview with The Verge. “This is an effort unprecedented in scale and complexity. It’s a big deal, and we need to make sure it goes smoothly.”
In particular, he pointed to the lack of available products in the other Matter categories for Amazon to test. “There aren’t many [Matter-compatible] locks, window shades, and thermostats out there yet, and we want to test everything in our beta program first.” 
Matter is a new smart home interoperability standard that provides a common language for connected devices to communicate locally in your home without relying on a cloud connection. Developed by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung, Matter uses Wi-Fi and Thread wireless protocols and, in its first rollout, supports smart sensors, smart lighting, smart plugs and switches, smart thermostats, connected locks, and media devices including TVs. 
All of this means that if a smart home gadget you buy has the Matter logo, you can set it up and use it with any Matter-compatible device and any Matter-compatible platform. Matter devices are becoming available, and we expect more to arrive this year.
Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home are some of the major platforms that support Matter, and they have all updated their compatible hubs to be Matter controllers.
It’s disappointing that we have to wait for support for Thread. Thread is a relatively new protocol in the smart home, and it’s already causing consumer confusion with its need for a Thread border router. But there aren’t many border routers available yet. Apple’s HomePod Mini and some Apple TV models are Thread border routers, as are Eero Wi-Fi routers and Nanoleaf smart lighting panels. The last two aren’t compatible with Matter yet, but you don’t need a Matter-compatible Thread border router to run Matter devices as long as you have a Matter controller elsewhere in your setup. But we need more options for Thread border routers, and soon.
Amazon has said it will update its Echo fourth-gen smart speaker to support Matter over Thread, and now that Matter is here, I had hoped support would come quickly. But there is some complexity around how Thread border routers from different manufacturers will work with each other to create a single Thread network that still needs to be worked out. 
DeCenzo says Amazon wants to wait until everything is ready to go before enabling Thread. It has already worked with Samsung to share the necessary credentials between their Thread border routers to create a single Thread network in your home, but work is still needed with Google and Apple. Additionally, the delay of an iOS Matter-compatible Alexa app is due to “Apple requiring apps to use new APIs that only just became available,” says DeCenzo. He says they want to take the time to test the integration before releasing it.
So, it seems that while all the big companies have been working hand in hand to bring Matter to this point, we still need a bit more cooperation among frenemies before this thing is finally ready for primetime. “Matter is a journey — we do believe it’s going to make the smart home more interoperable and easier for a customer,” says DeCenzo. “But there’s still lots more work to do as an industry to Boost Matter.”
/ Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we’ve tested sent to your inbox daily.
The Verge is a vox media network
© 2023 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved

source

Amazon announced this morning it will begin to leverage generative AI to help customers better understand what customers are saying about a product, without necessarily having to read through dozens of individual reviews. The retailer says it will use the new technology to provide a short paragraph of text right on the product detail page that will highlight the product features and customer sentiment mentioned across the customer reviews.

This blub of text could be used to get an overall sense of the common themes across the reviews more easily, Amazon noted.

In addition to the summary text, Amazon will also highlight key product attributes as clickable buttons. For example, if a customer wanted to know about the product’s “ease of use” or “performance,” they could tap a button to see just those reviews that mention those terms.

Amazon had already offered a similar feature by surfacing frequently used words found in the reviews, which were also available as clickable buttons.

Image Credits: Amazon

The new AI-powered features will initially be rolled out to a subset of U.S. shoppers on mobile devices across a “broad selection” of products, Amazon said. During these tests, the company will work to learn and fine-tune its AI models to Boost their effectiveness. It’s also working to expand the highlights feature over time to include additional categories, as the feature becomes more broadly available to customers.

Of course, the AI summaries will only be as good as the data they ingest. And Amazon has struggled for years with fake and misleading product reviews, including paid reviews.

In 2021, the company admitted it had blocked 200 million fake reviews the year prior, for example. It has also tried to crack down on the sources of fake reviews for years via lawsuits and other actions, including suing sellers who bought fake reviews. Last year, it also sued the admins from 10,000 Facebook groups who were engaged in fake review brokering.

More recently, the FTC got involved, forcing a supplement maker to pay $600,000 in a case involving hijacked Amazon reviews — a situation where products are combined into a single listing to boost the reviews of one product with the good reviews of another.

With the growing capabilities of AI, fake reviews may now be even tougher to spot as the technology advances to sound more human, which could lead to another explosion of fake reviews. That would make Amazon’s AI-powered summaries of reviews less helpful, if the company doesn’t have other means of keeping AI-written reviews off its site.

Amazon addresses the concern around fake reviews today, saying it will only summarize those reviews from Tested purchases. Plus, it continues to invest “significant resources” to proactively stop fake reviews.

“This includes machine learning models that analyze thousands of data points to detect risk, including relations to other accounts, sign-in activity, review history, and other indications of unusual behavior, as well as expert investigators that use sophisticated fraud-detection tools to analyze and prevent fake reviews from ever appearing in our store,” notes the retailer.

For more crisp and insightful business and economic news, subscribe to The Daily Upside newsletter. It's completely free and we guarantee you'll learn something new every day.

Knowledge is power. According to Amazon, that extends to machine learning models, too. 

The company wants to patent a system that transfers the knowledge of one machine learning model to another. Essentially, Amazon's patent allows for the knowledge of one machine learning model that's completed its training to be transferred to another model that's undergoing training, thereby speeding up the training of AI models. 

"Generally, training a machine learning model, such as a reinforcement learning model, from scratch requires a huge amount of time and computing resources," the filing notes. "Thus, it is desirable to have techniques to Boost the learning speed of a machine learning model." 

Amazon outlines two kinds of transfers: a representation transfer and an instance transfer. In a representation transfer, the knowledge that's given (such as how to perform a task or follow a policy) is based on the similarities between the "teacher model" and the "student model." Essentially, this system will distill the knowledge transferred to only the relevant information depending on those similarities. 

Alternatively, in an instance transfer, the conveyed knowledge comes from "sampled trajectories" of the teacher model, or basically exact examples of its own inputs and outputs. The system automatically switches between doing representation transfers and instance transfers depending on the circumstance. 

Amazon noted that this method could be applied to various AI training processes, including neural networks used for image processing and speech recognition. 

Knowledge transfer is far from a new technique in the machine learning community, said Rijul Gupta, co-founder of AI communications company Deep Media. Gupta gave the example of an AI model that can play chess versus one that can play checkers: The games are somewhat similar, so transferring knowledge between them wouldn't be difficult. 

Most of Amazon's patent is quite broad, Gupta said, so it's unlikely that it would get approved without a decent amount of pushback and narrowing. In its current form, granting it would "essentially cripple everyone else's machine learning development," Gupta said.  

But the filing isn't entirely old news. One piece that's novel is its ability to automatically choose which teacher model is the best fit for training the student model without having to actually go through training, said Gupta. Typically, this process is a costly and tedious process that's done by hand. 

Secondly, Amazon's patent discusses a way to bridge the gap between teacher and student models that are more distinct from each other. For example, rather than making the chess algorithm play checkers, Gupta said, it could "take an algorithm that's built to play chess and make it play Fortnite."  

Using transfer techniques, he said, could speed up machine learning development by as much as 95%, helping it catch companies like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. Meanwhile, securing the patent in a more narrow form could send the company's AI development soaring, making it "very difficult for any of Amazon's competitors to catch up to them."

Amazon has thrown its hat into the AI ring in more ways than one: The company pledged $100 million toward a AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, put together a new team focused on large language models, and has filed for multiple AI-related patents. As it stands, though, it remains a step behind the AI heavyweights. 

That said, Amazon's real strength lies in AWS, said Gupta, with tools like SageMaker and Bedrock, as well as Inferentia and Trainium, its custom in-house chips for training AI. Plus, as AWS CEO Adam Selipsky told The Verge in a podcast last week, "Cloud and AI are not two different things. They're really just two of the many faces of the same thing." 

"There's an old saying that when there's a gold rush, you should sell shovels," said Gupta. "And Amazon, right now, is selling shovels." 

Have any comments, tips or suggestions? Drop us a line! Email at [email protected] or shoot us a DM on Twitter @patentdrop. If you want to get Patent Drop in your inbox, click here to subscribe.

By Patrick Wingrove

(Reuters) - Amazon.com said on Tuesday its online pharmacy will automatically apply manufacturer-sponsored coupons to more than 15 insulin and diabetes medicines to help patients access discounts pledged by the drug industry.

With the new program, patients using Amazon Pharmacy will no longer have to search for and manually enter coupons from the three largest insulin makers, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, to lower the cost of their insulin to as little as $35 for a month's supply, the company said.

Novo, Lilly and Sanofi announced in March that they would slash their insulin prices by at least 70% by or in 2024, but a report from Senator Elizabeth Warren released last month said some patients were finding it difficult to get already discounted generic insulin from pharmacies at the promised lower price.

Despite Lilly lowering the list price of its Insulin Lispro to $25 per vial in May, patients were still being quoted as much as $330 for the medicine, were not being told about cheaper options when they went to pharmacies, and were finding it difficult to use Lilly's savings program, Warren's report found.

Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy's Chief Medical Officer, said the report highlighted the need to make it easier for patients to get their insulin at the lowest possible prices.

"It's not easy to actually figure out how to get that low cost, even though manufacturers and Congress have moved towards that direction. Transparency here is really key," he said.

Amazon Pharmacy will also automatically apply available discounts to diabetes-related medical devices from manufacturers Dexcom and Insulet, including continuous glucose monitors and pumps, as well as to other cardiometabolic medicines such as Novo's powerful weight-loss drug Wegovy.

American Diabetes Association Chief Executive Officer Charles Henderson said Amazon's automated discounting would help the 37 million Americans with diabetes more easily access the treatments they need.

"We want those in the diabetes community to be able to make informed decisions about their diabetes care and medication costs," he said.

Amazon has worked to lure customers away from more established pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens since launching its healthcare business in late 2020, announcing this month that it had doubled its active pharmacy users over the past year.

"Customers have got a lot of choices out there, and they're going to choose what's best for them. So, we're going to create options that gives them access to these medications," Amazon Pharmacy Vice President John Love told Reuters.

(Reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler)