Ever wanted a robot that can draw pictures, forge signatures, and take care of all those handwritten wedding invitations you’ve been meaning to finish? Probably not — but even though you never asked for it, Evil Mad Scientist Labs went ahead and built a robot that can do all that stuff for you anyway.
Announced in late November, the AxiDraw V3 is a high performance consumer writing and drawing machine. Using fountain and ballpoint pens, markers, or even chalk, the AxiDraw V3 can do almost anything you could do with a handheld pen, according to the device’s creators.
The company designed the AxiDraw V3 from the ground up, prioritizing smooth, rolling wheels on aluminum extrusions “designed for high stiffness and light weight.” It’s quicker, with higher quality fine output than the previous version, which it’ll replace.
Evil Mad Scientist Labs wants the AxiDraw V3 to last a long time; “no parts on AxiDraw require regular replacement,” the company says on its website. Though if it is needed, users will be able to tinker with and adjust the device—the company takes a “screws not glue” approach to its design.
So what can you use it for? The AxiDraw V3 might not be ideal for the casual users—after all, it costs $475—it would come in especially handy for those who create lots of party invitations or sign tons of documents. Text is printed with a handmade look, something inkjet or laser printing simply can’t replicate. Evil Mad Scientist Labs suggests using the AxiDraw V3 for creating formal invitations, place cards, signing diplomas, addressing envelopes, computer generated artwork, thank you notes, and menus.
The printable area of the AxiDraw V3 is just about 8 1/2 x 11″, though the extendable drawing head allows the machine to draw on surfaces bigger than itself—that includes posters, chalkboards, or whiteboards.
Perfect handwriting is just $475 out of reach, unless you want to shell out the cash to save your arm some work.
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.