In my ongoing quest to put as many of the popular indoor hydroponic garden systems as I can through their paces, I have noticed something irritating.

Many, if not most, of these systems require—or at minimum, strongly suggest—ordering proprietary seed pods, inserts, or capsules from the company itself. You can jury-rig, of course, but usually at your own hassle and failure risk. If you order through the companies, not only can the excess packaging be wasteful, the costs add up quickly (competitor Click & Grow’s pods, for example, are almost $5 each).

When I saw the Auk (pronounced “owk”) and its four little pots of coconut coir advertised on my social media feed, I was immediately intrigued. Finally, an open-system indoor garden where you can grow your own seeds! There’s got to be a catch, I thought. But there isn’t. After testing it for six weeks, I can report that the Auk fully delivers on its promise of “herbs made simple.”

Just the Basics

Although its ads make it seem like a newcomer, Norway-based Auk has actually been in business since 2021. It’s perhaps best known for its original Auk 1 hydroponic garden, which features a more complicated water reservoir, nutrient mixer, and lighting setup that garnered mixed reviews online for inconsistent light cycles and watering. The herb-focused Auk Mini, on the other hand, is not that.

Released in May 2024, it features four oval pots with slotted bottoms that sit atop a 3-liter reservoir. This 17.5 x 8.5 x 14.5-inch base is flanked by two wooden poles, which hold a tension-set full-spectrum light bar. A little wheel on the side indicates the water level, with a red dot indicating when it’s empty.

Courtesy of Auk; Photograph: Kat Merck

Simply fill the pots with the included coconut coir (fibers from the exterior of coconuts), plant your seeds, add squirts of the included nutrients (the bottles say how many on the side), plug in the light bar, and position it 4 inches above the pots to start. That’s it. There’s no pump, and the light bar will stay on for 17.5 hours—hold the button underneath the light for five seconds to set the “sunrise” time. Finish options include oak or walnut, with white or black pots.

Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) based at London College of Fashion, UAL, has unveiled a new 3D volumetric capture service, the first of its kind available to digital-first fashion designers and brands.

This next-generation creative technology uses an FIA designed process called digital reskinning, where virtual garments with realistic physics and textures are applied to captured human performances. The result is hyper-real fashion content that moves naturally and expressively, creating endless possibilities across digital campaigns and virtual runways.

London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency has launched a groundbreaking 3D volumetric capture service using digital reskinning to create hyper-real virtual fashion content.
This AI-enhanced technology enables designers to produce lifelike digital doubles for campaigns, virtual try-ons, and virtual runways, reducing the need for physical samples.

By capturing full-body motion in high-resolution 3D and using AI mesh stabilisation, FIA’s newly launched offering produces digital doubles; ready to be restyled and reimagined. Through digital reskinning, a single captured performance can be transformed into an entire collection, enabling brands to tell rich stories while reducing the need for physical samples and the associated costs, the company said in a press release.

“Until now, there has been no clear or consistent pipeline for designers to access this level of digital reskinning. What we’ve built changes that. We have been able to achieve the highest standard of 3D volumetric capture currently available; it’s remarkably lifelike and ready for real-world use. For the first time, designers and brands can harness this technology in a way that’s intuitive and scalable,” Matthew Drinkwater, head of Fashion Innovation Agency, said.

Designed for use across fashion, gaming, film, and immersive entertainment, this streamlined service supports everything from campaign ideation to consumer-facing virtual try-ons. It offers brands a future-facing, sustainable way to build content pipelines ready to meet the growing demand for high-quality digital fashion assets.

The service has been developed with the support of University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR), 4D Views and UAL’s Creative Enterprise Network; a strategic initiative built around sharing of expertise, resources and networks across UAL colleges to help student and staff entrepreneurs to scale-up the impact of their ventures. In 2023, Dr Gavin Clark was appointed UAL’s inaugural director of Enterprise & Commercialisation, further strengthening the university’s commitment to developing knowledge and IP-based innovation in the creative industries.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)

Meta’s newest artificial-intelligence powered smart glasses include a tiny display and can be controlled by a neural wristband that lets you control it with “barely perceptible movements,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday.

Zuckerberg continues to evangelize the glasses as the next step in human-computer interactions—beyond keyboards, touch screens or a mouse.

“Glasses are the only form factor where you can let AI see what you see, hear what you hear,” and eventually generate what you want to generate, such as images or video, Zuckerberg said, speaking at the tech giant’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters.

The glasses, called Meta Ray-Ban Display, will be available Sept. 30 and cost $799.

Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said Meta’s latest reveal is “reminiscent of when the Apple Watch first debuted as an alternative to the smartphone.”

“But what these glasses do is bring more utility to consumers in a single device. Unlike VR headsets, glasses are an everyday, non-cumbersome form factor,” the analyst added. “However, the onus is on Meta to convince the vast majority of people who don’t own AI glasses that the benefits outweigh the cost. The good news? There’s a lot of runway to earn market share.”

Meta also updated its original, display-less Ray-Ban glasses to have a better battery life, which Meta says lasts eight hours with typical use, nearly twice as long as the previous model. An upcoming feature, called “conversation focus,” will amplify the voice of the person the user is speaking to and help drown out background noise. This will be available on the older version of the glasses too, as a software update, Zuckerberg said. Meta also added German and Portuguese to the gadget’s live translation capabilities. The new model costs $379, and the previous model now costs $299.

The company also unveiled a new set of AI-powered glasses for athletes, called the Oakley Meta Vanguard, which Meta says is specifically for “high-intensity sports” and can be integrated with Garmin devices to give users feedback about their workouts such as heart rate and stats. For instance, a runner could ask “Hey Meta, what’s my heart rate?” and get a voice response through the glasses. It also auto-captures video clips when the user hits key milestones or ramps up their heart rate, speed or elevation. The glasses will cost $499 and go on sale Oct. 21.

While the company has not disclosed sales figures of the glasses, it said they have been more popular than expected.

“For more than a decade, Zuckerberg’s long-term vision with Oculus and the Metaverse has been that glasses and headsets will blur the lines between physical and digital worlds,” Forrester analyst Thomas Husson said. “After many false starts, the momentum to move beyond an early adopter niche is now.”

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Meta teased a prototype for Orion, which Zuckerberg called “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen,” last year—but these holographic augmented reality glasses are still years away from being on the market.

Like other tech companies, Meta has been making massive investments in AI development and hiring top talent at eye-popping compensation levels.

In July, Zuckerberg posted a note detailing his views on “personal superintelligence” that he believes will “help humanity accelerate our pace of progress.” While he said that developing superintelligence is now “in sight,” he did not detail how this will be achieved or exactly what “superintelligence” means. The abstract idea of “superintelligence” is what rival companies call artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

Zuckerberg has said he believes AI glasses are going to be “the main way we integrate superintelligence.”

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