We can’t argue against how well-designed Apple products are, but we do have a few things to say about its practicality in daily life. Take for example the Apple TV. From the ads, the little black box is a tiny device that should fit into any home regardless of furniture design aesthetics. In reality, it’s more than just that: since most of you will be attaching an HDMI cord to your Apple TV, you might have already noticed how the cord is heavier than the Apple TV itself. Frustrated by the same problem, designer Austin White crafted a wooden placeholder to prevent the device from tilting around. Thus, Blocs were born.
“The weight of the HDMI cord is greater than the Apple TV itself [so the device] kept turning skew,” White tells Digital Trends. “So when I went to use the remote, I needed longer arms to hold out to the side to point the remote at the front of the Apple TV.”
White was kind enough to send us a piece of his creation and we have to say, this thing is quite beautiful. To some, it may be just your average wooden tray with slots carved out. But to us, it solves a seemingly benign but nit-picky issue. After all, how can you appreciate the Apple design aesthetic if the device can’t even stand faced forward to sync with your remote?
With the Bloc wooden placeholder, your Apple TV and remote always have a place to go. White says he chose wood for the design because woodworking has always been a hobby, and the contrast of cool technology and classic wood seemed like a neat way to show both items off. The selection of Walnut, Cherry, or Maple wood colors also makes it easy for you to match the accessory to your current furnitures. Out of the box, the Bloc does have a pretty strong scent of wood — which totally proves it’s the real deal — but overtime, the smell does dissipate for those who may be a little put off.
It’s a neat design with a simple solution, and thankfully, a modest price tag to go with. The American-made Bloc, in three available wood colors, retails for $40 and comes just in time for the holiday shopping season. Put this on the list for your diehard Apple fan, or those who can appreciate minimalistic design to change the way you aim your clicker at the Apple TV forever.
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.