Cape Watch: Wonder Woman Gets a Shiny New Director

Marvel Comics (left, right), Warner Bros. (center)

In case you missed it somehow—maybe you were busy watching Daredevil—Avengers: Age of Ultron is very close to hitting theaters, when it’ll become the biggest movie ever released or something (well, until the new Star Wars in December, at least). There has been all manner of promotion for it in the last week, including livestreams of the red carpet premiere and revelations that one of the biggest mysteries about the movie’s trailer wasn’t actually meant to be a mystery at all. But let’s just presume you already knew all that and move on. Here, instead, is the cream of the superhero movie news crop from the last seven days that isn’t Ultron-centric (apart from one item).

SUPER IDEA (MAYBE?): A Change for Wonder Woman

On Monday, The Hollywood Reporter had the news that director Michelle MacLaren had left Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman movie due to what are being called “creative differences”—in other words, the go-to euphemism for “we’re not really going to tell you what happened.” But don’t worry, the WW movie isn’t in too much trouble. Just two days later, THR broke the story that Patty Jenkins would be replacing her, and that everything was surprisingly still on track.

Why this is just confusing: The MacLaren Wonder Woman held a lot of promise, considering her amazing work on television, and the “creative differences” reasoning is something that almost always covers up a bad scene that nobody wants to talk about, so we’ll probably never know what happened there. However, bringing Jenkins in is a smart move, not just because it shows that Warners is dedicated to keeping a woman at the helm of the movie, but also because Jenkins famously left Marvel’s second Thor movie over similar “creative differences” back in 2011, to the upset of the movie’s stars. Managing to avoid an Ant-Man-esque situation while also hiring someone who has previously walked away from a Marvel gig? Double points for bluntness, Warners.

SUPER IDEA: Marvel Courting Guardians of the Galaxy, Pixar Writers for Captain Marvel

THR also had the story that Marvel is looking to bring Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve together to co-write a screenplay for Captain Marvel, its 2018 project that will see the studio finally let a woman play the lead. Perlman has previous Marvel experience, having co-written last summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy, while LeFauve is one of the writers on the upcoming Pixar movie Inside Out. Both had submitted pitches for the movie separately, but Marvel intends to combine them into one screenplay.

Why this is super: As Guardians shows, Perlman’s got what it takes to “get” Marvel, and it’s hard to argue with the Pixar pedigree, so this seems like a pretty solid team for what’s going to be an important movie for Marvel. Now all we need is a director and a star… (For those wondering, yes, the “Michelle MacLaren is being courted for Captain Marvel” rumors started about five minutes after she left Wonder Woman.)

MEH IDEA: Captain Marvel Isn’t in Avengers: Age of Ultron

Speaking of Captain Marvel, it turns out she really was going to be in the second Avengers movie … in Joss Whedon’s mind, at least. “The way we reveal Scarlet Witch [in costume] at the end of the movie? Those were Captain Marvel plate shots,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Badass Digest during an interview to promote Age of Ultron. “Joss said, ‘We’ll cast her later!’ And I said, ‘Yeah Joss, we’ll cast her later.’ [Whispers to an invisible associate who isn’t Joss] ‘We’re not putting her in there!'” The reason Feige was against her showing up in the movie was that bringing her into the movie without a proper origin “would have done that character a disservice,” he explained. Sorry, Carol fans.

Why this is … well, common sense, more than anything: As much as there’s a certain element of the comic book fanbase currently very upset at this news, it’s hard to argue that Feige’s wrong. Just dropping Captain Marvel into the movie without a real introduction makes her seem peripheral to events and less important or interesting than the other heroes as a result (kind of like Hawkeye in Thor). It’s not the worst idea to let her rest until she can get the attention she deserves.

SUPER IDEA: Olivia Munn Is a Mutant

Clearly, Bryan Singer has reached the Jim Lee period of Uncanny X-Men in his research for next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Not only do we know that Jubilee will show up and have heard many rumors that Channing Tatum’s Gambit will also make an appearance, but now it turns out that The Newsroom’s Olivia Munn will be playing Psylocke, the caucasian supermodel turned Asian ninja much beloved by teenage boys because of her fighting skills and knife, which is the focused totality of her psychic powers and not her figure-hugging costume at all.

Why this is super: We abandoned X-Men just before Psylocke came into ascendance as a character, but we can’t deny that we’re looking forward to hearing whether or not Munn actually has to deliver the line about her knife being the focused totality of her psychic abilities. If she doesn’t, we can at least hope she’s asked to do so at every interview and convention appearance to promote the movie.

SUPER IDEA: Ant-Man Might Not Be as Bad as You Feared

What with all the overwhelming hype surrounding the oh-so-close release of Avengers: Age of Ultron, you might have forgotten that another Marvel Studios movie is set for release this year. In case that’s true, Marvel tried to rekindle interest in Ant-Man by releasing another trailer—one that’s thankfully not as dull as the first.

Why this is super: Putting aside the really distracting performances of everyone involved that isn’t Paul Rudd (seriously, everyone comes across as weirdly affected and unconvincing, right?), there are a couple of lines and/or moments here that suggest that there’s a funny and fun movie struggling to be released from under all the self-importance. Please, oh please, let the finished product end up being more like that than the first trailer suggested.

The Warped, Weed-Fueled World of the Major Lazer Cartoon

There are certain shows that defy easy description. Shows whose premises aren’t exactly cut out for the program guide on your TV. Shows like, say, Major Lazer. Here’s the briefest thumbnail we can muster:

Somewhere far off in a dystopian future, Jamaica has become Earth’s most powerful nation—and an epicenter of oppression. From the White House (which has since relocated to the Caribbean), the grumpy, nefarious President Whitewall persecutes the Jamaican people and aims to curb all the good times. He’s aided by the metal-jawed General Rubbish, a right-hand man with what looks to be a vinyl-record-turned-buzz saw for a right hand. Meanwhile, Whitewall’s teenage daughter Penny just wants to cut loose and soak up the music and culture of the real Jamaica—its dancehalls, bars, and streets. She’s also secretly befriended Whitewall’s number one enemy: Major Lazer, a brawny, beret- and sunglasses-clad supersoldier whose right forearm has been replaced with a laser gun. Lazer, who has been portrayed by Terry Crews in live-action form, runs a strip club full of holograms, enjoys cannabis, and can surf on a bird if need be.

There are also several vampires and at least one ninja.

So goes the high-intensity absurdity of FXX’s long-gestating animated series, which premieres at midnight tonight (really that’s midnight tomorrow, but you know what we mean). With a hero voiced by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (aka Lost‘s Mr. Eko), the music-heavy program is based on the mascot for Major Lazer, Diplo’s party-starting, culture-fusing dancehall/electronic act. “Every single episode is pretty ridiculous,” says Ferry Gouw, art director and co-creator of Major Lazer (the character and the show). “Really stupid and really deep at the same time.”

The character’s road to animation started around 2008, after Diplo first created the music project. Diplo and his manager auditioned Gouw, a visual artist, to design a “Rasta commando with a laser gun for an arm” as the project’s visual centerpiece. The properties they offered up as reference points—Marvel Comics, and 1980s cartoons like G.I. Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and Centurions—were the kinds of things Gouw grew up with. He created a few quick mockups of the Major Lazer character and project logo, and his designs have been used and stayed almost entirely the same ever since.

Gouw has made hundreds of Major Lazer illustrations for albums, remixes, tweets and other uses, but the project really turned a corner with the video for Major Lazer’s 2009 track “Hold the Line.” The clip, which Gouw animated, depicts Lazer battling a vampiric villain; interspersed is a lovingly detailed commercial for ’80s-esque Major Lazer-themed figures and vehicles. Gouw doesn’t speak particularly fondly of the result—“looking back, it’s embarrassing and shitty,” he says—but it was nominated for a 2009 MTV Video Music Award for Breakthrough Video. “That was the start of the idea that this illustrated character could have some legs and go on to become a natural animated thing,” Gouw says. “The look of the world in the video, and the toys—people remember that era instinctively.”

Adult Swim then approached the Major Lazer camp about making a cartoon for it. News of and production sketches of a Major Lazer show date back to 2011, and a pilot was created at some point, but the results never made it to air. The show’s launch was spearheaded by Nick Weidenfeld, a producer for various Adult Swim series including Metalocalypse and Moral Orel, but then Weidenfeld left the network to head to Fox, and the project began to drag. In February 2013, the series was officially canceled. However, over at Fox, Weindenfeld was planting the seeds for what would become FXX’s Animation Domination High Def block; eventually, Major Lazer joined him at his new home.

The show’s visuals are still ripped out of the late ’80s/early ’90s animation playbook—colorful, slightly faded, semi-realistic, semi-clunky—and its villains are grotesque weirdos, just as in programs like Toxic Avengers and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. The show’s cast is promisingly diverse, including J.K. Simmons as President Whitewall, Andy Samberg, Aziz Ansari, and Charli XCX. (We’re not sure how that happened either.)

The most surprising element, though, is the fun the show has with recreational vices—for good or evil. Riff Raff voices Double Cup, a cough-syrup-powered villain who wants to poison the local water supply with cough syrup so that everyone slows down (thus literally slowing down any rebel forces). Another episode involves getting too high to the point of literally flying into the sky and confronting a terrifying weed monster.

But while Major Lazer sports all the trappings of a contemporary stoner comedy—the chaos, the weirdness, the post-modernism—Gouw points to its emphasis on narrative flow and pacing. There are no Family Guy-style cutaway jokes; rather, the narrative morphs to a music video back to the narrative, then to a fight scene, and so on. “It’s just frantically moving forward,” Gouw says. “In that way, it’s kind of like being high—but not the kind of high where you laugh at slacker jokes,” he says.

It’s been a long time since we’ve enjoyed the shamelessly silly music spin-off cartoons; New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer’s Hammerman were both more than 20 years ago. The difference between those tie-ins and Major Lazer, of course, is that this turns the wink-wink, so-goofy-it’s-good knob way up—but just like its predecessors the show’s appeal still hinges on its crossover element. As part of contemporary electronic/dance music culture’s massive upswing in popularity, Diplo’s been having a really long (and ongoing) moment worth capitalizing on.

Gouw is confident that the show’s characters and story are rich enough to push past the novelty of the tie-in, and could even potentially survive the waning of electronic music’s cultural power. But while he envisions a full-fledged toy line of action figures and vehicles, he knows that there’s more to success than arm-mounted weaponry and some killer beats. “There’s nothing more sad than keeping [it] going when it’s shit,” he says. “As long as it’s good, we’ll make it.”

Why We Need a Human ‘Intention Genome’

Dan Ariely has devoted his career to scrutinizing the bizarre logic that often guides human behavior—and amassing the evidence that exposes us as incorrigible liars and hypocrites, irrational decision-makers, and incompetent money managers. His latest projects poke at humans’ pathological addiction to procrastination and poor time management.

Yet for a guy who began his research by studying the psychology of pain—in part because he had experienced so much of his own when he was 18 and suffered severe burns after a flare exploded next to him—Ariely isn’t a career misanthrope. The professor of behavioral economics at Duke University is shifting a lot of his attention today toward exploring a much more hopeful question: Can technology—especially AI—help humans reverse eons of irrational behavior and bad habits that seem hard-coded in our DNA? Ariely believes it can, and believes that it will start with AI-oriented software and tools that can create what he calls an “intention genome” for every individual—tools to help align our unlimited aspirations and goals with our very limited time on earth.

Ariely has taken his own step in that direction as co-founder of Timeful, a new time-management app that taps into machine intelligence to create personalized daily schedules aligned to priorities and goals. We asked him to explain why humans are in such dire need of technology’s help.

What excites you most about where we’re headed with technology?

So far, technology has helped us dramatically improve the physical world. All of a sudden we can write, we can talk over great distances, we can climb great buildings with elevators and escalators and so on.

But we haven’t done the same thing for cognitive limitations. I’m hoping that technology will make it easier for us to achieve things that are more difficult that have to do with what do we decide to spend our precious financial, time, and social resources on? How can technology help us make fewer mistakes? How can we make sure we don’t sacrifice the future for the present?

What worries you the most?

What worries me is that it’s not clear we’re going in that direction. I think that as technology improves, much of the improvement in technology is actually making things worse. Think about Facebook. It has lots of wonderful uses. But you can ask the question, to what degree is this helping people be more productive in the long run? And to what extent is Facebook not optimizing something important in the long run, but simply optimizing something in the short term? For example, Facebook would probably be very happy if you checked Facebook for three hours every day rather than one hour, even though in the long term you would be less productive, have less money, and be more distracted from important things.

To me, this sort of myopic optimization—short-term optimization on behalf of companies when they control our environment and they can get us to behave in a way that is not in our best long-term interest—is frightening. I think more and more, companies try to distract us. They try to distract us on our computers, phones and on TV. Our goals get sacrificed for the benefit of the short-term goals of those companies. And because of that, we’re getting more and more tempted—we’re less able to execute on our long-term goals. The question is, will we start developing technologies that can help solve this?

Let’s assume we won’t solve the Facebook issue anytime soon. How else could we tackle this problem of distraction?

One example is electronic wallets. The way electronic wallets are built these days, they’re mostly about getting people to spend money faster without thinking about it. Think about Apple Pay and this idea that you go into Starbucks, take stuff out and you don’t even charge anything. You just walk out and they know who you are and what you took, and they charge you a month later on your credit card. What all of those things create is higher temptation, lower personal accountability, and lack of thinking about the future.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Imagine how we could create technologies that would get people to think extra carefully about spending, so that every time you’re about to go into a coffee shop, you would think about, where is this money coming from? What would you not be able to do? Is it over or under your budget? Technology doesn’t have to be about temptation at the moment, but that’s the direction we’re headed.

You’ve shown how irrational we can be with money, ethics, and other issues. Why do you think lousy time management is the biggest problem that AI can help solve?

Because I think the technology is becoming available and that it’s possible. Let’s say I wanted to solve obesity. I would have to control all supermarkets, all restaurants, and I would have to control your kitchen. In principle, that’s possible, if you want to give me permission. But it’s going to be very tough. With money, same thing. Again, I would have to control all credit cards, electronic wallets, and so on.

Time management is actually more straightforward. The reason is that most of us use a calendar. A calendar is this thing that when we see it, and we see how things are set up for us, there’s a likelihood that we will actually execute in that order. If you think about food, money, and calendars, calendars right now provide the highest opportunity for change.

Why should we focus on new technology for calendars? I’ve got 5 calendar apps.

There is a beautiful study where they gave half the people a lecture on the importance of getting a vaccination, and only 3 percent of the people went. They gave the other half the same lecture, but they also asked them to indicate on their calendar when they were going to go. In that group, 26 percent of the people went to get vaccinations. Not everybody wants to get vaccinated. But the idea is that we have intentions, and unless they get specified in a concrete way on the calendar, they’re unlikely to be carried out. The calendar is an incredibly good tool for that.

Is this what you think the creation of an “intention genome” will solve?

Yes. The idea of the intention genome is that you can think about intentions as characterized in a multidimensional space. For example, if you tell me that you want to go running, I know that it’s something that takes between 30 minutes and an hour. You could do it either most likely before work, or with some likelihood later in the day, and the exact hour doesn’t matter so much. If you tell me you want to do laundry, I know that it’s something that doesn’t require much cognitive skills or attention, that you can do it at home, it takes about two hours, and during the same time, you could do some other things, as well.

If you tell me that you have a presentation to work on, I know already that it’s something that you need to focus on, maybe use your most productive hours of the day to do it, that then you might need a little break from it, and you could come back and do some of the other stuff. I also know it has a deadline, and I know that if you finish it before the deadline, you would not be stressed, and if you work on it up to the last moment, you will be stressed.

Every intention can be represented in terms of when could it be carried out, how important it is, and how much capacity it needs, and can you do something else at the same time? And how long can you focus on it in one sitting, and do you have to finish it in one sitting, or can you spread it over multiple days? Does it actually get better if you break it over multiple days or not? We can represent all of the intentions this way. And the moment we do, it gives us tremendous power to figure out when to schedule things for people. That’s basically the idea, that we understand the fundamental attributes of what people want to do, and we schedule them taking into account those fundamental attributes.

Do you see AI solutions on the horizon that could help reverse some of our bad habits?

Absolutely. Personally, I have huge challenges with time management, so I’m really enjoying Timeful. But I think that other solutions could be helping people make decisions about food and make decisions about money.

Let’s just take money. Money is all about now versus later, which is a very tough computation, and it’s about what are we getting now and what are we giving up? This is very complex. If I asked you to cut down $500 from your spending now, what should you cut? What’s the best way to cut it and not lose a lot from the quality of life? It’s not clear what the right answer is. But maybe I could help you figure out the right approach.

Similarly with food—if I asked you what is the kind of food that you would eat that would be the most compatible with your lifestyle and diet, how would you figure it out? You’re supposed to keep everything in mind and do the experiments and add things and subtract things. That’s very, very tough. But with AI and new technologies and software, we can help people with those things.

I think that data and technology approaches that look at what we do, how we live and that map other elements to it, such as happiness and quality of life, can actually help us make much better decisions. That’s my hope.

Boston Is All About Robots, Freedom, and Lobstah

Boston Is All About Robots, Freedom, and Lobstah

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645,966 PEOPLE LIVE IN BOSTON // MORE THAN 360,000 STUDENTS ATTEND 85 COLLEGES IN THE AREA // 35,671 RUNNERS ENTERED THE 2014 BOSTON MARATHON // 9 RUNNERS WERE MORE THAN 80 YEARS OLD // 54 COMPETITORS RACED IN WHEELCHAIRS // 95 COUNTRIES WERE REPRESENTED IN THE MARATHON Dan Matutina

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“There’s nothing better than watching the fish come right off the boats at the Boston Fish Pier. The greatest pizza in Boston is at Picco. The best sandwiches are at Sam LaGrassa’s.” – Roger Berkowitz, president and CEO of Legal Sea Foods and Massachusetts native Dan Matutina

645,966 People live in Boston // More than 360,000 students attend 85 colleges in the area // 35,671 runners entered the 2014 Boston Marathon // 9 runners were more than 80 years old // 54 competitors raced in wheelchairs // 95 countries were represented in the marathon Dan Matutina

Tens of thousands of people will run through Boston this April in the world's oldest annual marathon, a grueling race featuring four hills in the last 11 miles and more than a million fans cheering from the sidelines. Two years after a bombing threw the marathon's finish line into chaos, the city remains resilient. “It'll always be a part of our history,” says Thomas Grilk, the Boston Athletic Association's executive director. “But it won't define us.” Celebrate the city's rich history, free science exhibits, great art, and (finally) snowless sidewalks. You can enjoy it all without being a Sox fan. Probably.

Dan Matutina

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Top VC Firm Says Techies Need to Get Along With Government

From Airbnb to Uber, some of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies have been fighting regulators since their inception. Now, one of the tech industry’s most respected venture capital firms wants to help both sides of the battle make nice with each other.

Andreessen Horowitz announced today that it’s launching a new policy and regulatory affairs unit, and that it has appointed Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s former general counsel, to lead the shop. Ullyot, who worked at both the White House and the Department of Justice before coming to the Valley, will be tasked with helping the firm’s portfolio companies see eye to eye with the government regulators with whom they’re increasingly butting heads.

In general, Silicon Valley has not done a very good job of being proactive and having open lines of communication. Margit Wennmachers, Andreessen Horowitz

This move is a strong sign that the Berlin Wall that’s risen between Silicon Valley and government is beginning to crack as tech companies realize they can accomplish more by working with the the powers that be instead of against it. Meanwhile, the federal government at least is gradually becoming more receptive to tech and has started recruiting top tech talent like former Googler and current US CTO Megan Smith into its ranks.

“In general, Silicon Valley has not done a very good job of being proactive and having open lines of communication,” says Margit Wennmachers, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Now, I think both sides have gotten a lot better.”

Move Fast and Fix Things

That’s partly because they need to. Tech companies today are growing faster than ever before, thanks to the proliferation of mobile technology. This means they’re also attracting the attention of government much earlier than they did even a decade ago. At the same time, they’re taking on entrenched industries like transportation, payments, and hospitality, which are not only regulated by government, but are dominated by incumbents that have substantial sway over the government, from taxi industry lobbyists to big Wall Street donors. And often, it’s not the feds tech companies end up tangling with, but local and state regulators.

The goal of the new unit, Ullyot says, is to make sure Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio companies don’t have to start from scratch every time they run into a regulatory “surprise.” That, he says, was a big part of his job in the early days of Facebook, navigating the muddy waters of privacy regulation during the early days of social media. “From a lawyer’s perspective, it was a fascinating project,” he says. “I thought: is there a way you can do this on a broader scale and help a lot of companies and help the tech sector in general?”

As head of this new unit, he will be doing just that. It would be reasonable to assume there would also be a substantial amount of lobbying involved in this role, but Ullyot insists that’s not the case. Instead, he says his job will be to convene a network of regulators, think tanks, and “influencers” to make sure the firm’s companies are having the right conversations with the right people before an issue arises.

“We’ll be working with them to think about the issues, and hopefully avoid those surprise issues in the first place,” he says.

Still, when an issue does arise, as it often does with Andreessen Horowitz investments like Lyft and Airbnb, it’s not a huge leap to imagine that the firm would be tempted to throw its weight around to make more pointed requests, just like lobbyists would.

For now, at least, both Ullyot and Wennmachers say that’s not the plan, and that the firm intends to leave those duties to the companies, themselves, many of whom already have substantial public policy teams.

“We’re going to teach them how to fish rather than throwing the line ourselves,” says Wennmachers. “That’s how the company becomes a great company.”

How Ford Made Its F-150 Pickup Lighter and Safer Than Ever

A computer simulation of the 2015 F-150 smashing into a wall. Notice how the passenger compartment is barely affected because the engine compartment absorbs the brunt of the collision. Ford

The 2014 Ford F-150 had a 4-star NHTSA overall safety rating, making it as good as or better than any pickup on the US market, except for the 5-star Chevy Silverado.

Ford’s complete redesign of the truck for 2015 included a switch to an all-aluminum body that made the F-150 hundreds of pounds lighter, improving fuel economy and towing capacity. It also gave Ford the chance to go after that fifth star.

As part of the redesign, Ford added 31 new safety features, including neat things like rear seat belts that inflate in a crash, acting like a softening airbag.

The automaker’s engineers also looked at the frame of the truck, focusing their efforts on what they call the front crush horn. It’s the chunk of the frame that absorbs force in a frontal crash. It’s crucial, because every bit of force sucked up isn’t applied to the structure that surrounds the occupants. The engine compartment gets crunched so the driver doesn’t.

A computer simulation of the 2015 F-150’s frame during an impact. The front crash horns are illustrated in dark grey. The second wider brace (on the right) was added this year to improve side impact protection. Ford

Using computer simulations of crashes followed by physical testing, Ford’s engineers decided to replace the rectangular crush horn with a new, cross-shaped design (dark grey in the GIF above) as the best balance of weight and performance. Ford says the patented, 12-corner design provides a 100 performance improvement in crushing distance (as in, it’s stronger) over the outgoing version.

“We found that changing certain shapes led to a weight reduction, while also improving crash performance,” says Ford Truck Safety manager Matt Niesluchowski.

Part of what makes this setup twice as effective is, paradoxically, the addition of strategic weak spots. By punching out holes and bending the metal just so, the team can ensure that the horn crushes properly and absorbs the impact, without bending or compromising the overall design of the frame.

It appears all the work paid off: The first F-150 tested, the four-door cab version, landed five stars from NHTSA. Official ratings for the regular and SuperCab F-150 models are expected later this year but Ford says this is the safest F-150 it’s ever made.

Jawbone’s New Up4 Does So Much More Than Count Steps

Travis Bogard wants to get the obvious out of the way up front. Not five minutes after we sit down in a small conference room in Jawbone’s office in San Francisco, he says yes, he knows it took a long time to produce an Up3 that was ready for the masses. When Jawbone’s designers and engineers built prototypes of its powerful new fitness tracker they were waterproof to 10 meters. This was big news, and Jawbone proudly proclaimed the spec when it announced the band in November. But when its manufacturing partner started mass-producing the new bracelet, what came out of the factory just wasn’t passing the test. After months of tweaking the designs and production processes, Jawbone gave up—the new Up3 isn’t waterproof, but rather water-resistant.

On the plus side, you can finally get one! Months of pre-orders will be filled beginning April 20, and the $179 tracker will be available in stores and online as well. And lest you think the roadblocks suggest Jawbone has bitten off more innovation than it can chew, the company’s also introducing two new Up models: the Up2, on sale now, and the Up4, coming this summer.

The Up2 is functionally identical to the existing Up24, with basic activity and sleep tracking (and that great silent alarm feature), but has the same flexible, prettier, more comfortable body of the Up3. The Up24 was modeled after the infamous Livestrong bracelets everyone wore for a few months, but the rubbery look has gone the way of Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France victories, replaced by a more traditional bracelet aesthetic. Bogard points out the design a number of times, stacking it on top of a Fitbit Force as a reminder of just how much smaller it is. It comes in black and silver, and its $99 price hits an important spot in the market.

The $99 Up2 is a total redesign of the Up24. Jawbone

The Up4 is much more exciting. When—actually, that should be if, given Jawbone’s history—it comes out this summer, it’ll be the flagship model. After all that work, the Up3 gets only a brief moment in the sun. For $199 (only $20 more than the Up3), the Up4 also adds a handy new payment system courtesy of American Express. Bogard claims it works more or less like Apple Pay, using NFC to shuttle information between your device and your credit card company. Most of these systems are far from perfect, but in theory all you should have to do is tap your bracelet on a compatible reader and walk away. AmEx treats your Up4 like a credit card, in that it assumes you’re the one using it without other authentication. If your bracelet is stolen or lost, you can quickly use the app to disconnect your card. Jawbone’s case here is surprisingly compelling: the Up’s battery lasts days, not hours, and it’s explicitly made to never come off your body. The only cognitive workload left is figuring out if the store you’re shopping in has an NFC-capable reader, but those are quickly becoming ubiquitous too.

With the Up3 and Up4, Jawbone’s beginning to collect an enormous amount of data about its users. The new devices track your heart rate and hydration levels, the temperature of both your skin and your surroundings, and much more. But Bogard and Jawbone are crystal-clear about the fact that none of this data is useful unless it’s helping you do more and live better. The company’s “Smart Coach” feature is becoming ever more personalized and powerful, offering specific and actionable tips. It has really interesting ways of correlating data, too; Smart Coach can figure out that you’re always more active when you sleep even 30 minutes more, and can tell you exactly when to go to sleep.

When fitness trackers can not only tell us how to live better but invisibly help us do so, they'll become immensely powerful tools.

And soon, Bogard says, it could go even further. The Up3 will know that you’re sleeping poorly, and that your body temperature is higher than it should be. It can already tell you the next morning to turn the temperature down when you go to bed, but soon, thanks to its integrations with Nest and others, it might be able to just turn down the thermostat for you. When fitness trackers can not only tell us how to live better but invisibly help us do so, they’ll become immensely powerful tools. That’s what Jawbone is after, and that’s why there are so many sensors inside the Up3 and Up4. The company has been talking about this for a while, and the new devices seem to be the keys to unlock that potential.

Jawbone, as it has always been, is full of good ideas. It’s outrageously ambitious, and almost always in the right way. Yet its history is riddled with complications, particularly with its wristwear. Making this stuff is hard work—not to mention phenomenally, company-threateningly expensive—and the Up line hasn’t always gotten it right. But if Jawbone has really, truly solved its production woes, the Up3 and Up4 may prove that Jawbone is onto something much bigger than “fitness tracking.”