At any given moment there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there – alongside some real gems. We’ve cut through the Pebble clones and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects out there this week. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.
Feeling a bit guilty about how much water you waste every morning in the shower? If so, you should definitely check out OASense — a freshly-launched smart showerhead that uses presence sensors to better regulate the flow of water. Basically, the shower only sprays water when you’re directly underneath it. When you’re not, OASense immediately cuts off the flow. The idea seems to be that this setup makes it less of a hassle to take a “navy shower” by automatically turning the water off while you soap up, then quickly switching it back on when you want to rinse off.
It’s definitely not the first or only water-conserving showerhead we’ve ever encountered, but OASense’s approach is far more practical than some of the others we’ve seen. Rather than designing a complex nozzle system to reduce the flow (like the much-hyped and super expensive Nebia showerhead does), this one simply reduces the amount of time that the shower is actually on. Pretty smart, right?
Between Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, and the zillions of translation apps on the market, language learners have more tools at their disposal than ever before. But despite how sophisticated and accessible language learning programs have become, many of them suffer from the same drawback: the fact that you can’t really choose the words you learn.
That’s where Lingohop comes in. Rather than forcing you to memorize a bunch of useless phrases you’ll never use in the real world (the cat is small, the apple is red, etc), Lingohop lets you focus on specific situations and learn words and phrases that are relevant to your needs. When you first enroll in the service, you can set your goal (such as ‘trip preparation” or “client meeting”) and describe details like what kind of a trip it will be, and how much time you have before you leave. All of that information is then used to calculate how much of the language you have time to learn, and zero in on the most important stuff.
Drone technology has come a long way in the past few years, but regardless of how autonomous, stable, and reliable they might be, it’s still nerve wracking to fly over water. One false move, and your $1,200 toy gets sent to a watery grave — and maybe even your GoPro, too. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to take the stress and apprehension out of flying over water?
Enter: WaterStrider — a lightweight flotation device designed specifically for DJI’s hugely popular Phantom line machine. Named after the insect that cleverly skips across water, the WaterSlider features four buoyant landing pods at the end of each of its four splayed legs, allowing you to land safely on water. It probably won’t do any good if your drone is careening out of control – but if you touch it down softly, the WaterStrider will keep your drone high and dry.
Wish there was an easier way to track your food intake and monitor your nutrition? Us too. There’s a zillion apps in the world that allegedly help make it easier, but regardless of which one you choose, you’re still forced to fill in a bunch of fields and manually input a bunch of data about what you just ate. It’s equal parts tedious and time consuming — so most people just skip it.
Modus offers a different approach. While it doesn’t free you from manually entering information, this little scale allows you to weigh the things you eat, and take the guesswork out of portion reporting. Simply put your plate on top of the scale before you start eating, then again after you’re done. When you tell the app what kind of food was on the plate, it’ll approximate the number of calories you just ate, and spit out a detailed report on the meal’s nutritional value.
3D printing technology has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past few years, but even so, most consumer-level 3D printers still suffer from one key drawback: the fact that even at the highest resolutions, 3D printed objects still have visible layer lines. So, despite all the benefits of the additive manufacturing process, 3D printed parts just don’t look as smooth and nice as their injection-molded counterparts.
Chinese startup Polymaker wants to change that, and has developed a new finishing machine to make it happen. The Polysher, as it’s called, is designed to smooth out the layer lines on 3D printed objects, and make them nearly indistinguishable from injection molded parts. To do this, the company uses a special kind of filament that’s alcohol soluble, and then puts those parts in a chamber filled with vaporized alcohol. After a few minutes in the machine, parts come out with no visible layers.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.