A staple among children — and (ahem) tech news offices — everywhere, Nerf guns are a harmlessly entertaining way to blow off a little steam. Or at least they were until an ex-NASA engineer got the bright idea to manufacture the world’s largest Nerf gun that resembles what would likely be the toy of choice for Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant. How big is it, you ask? So big that when Marc Rober (the savvy engineer) sets the butt of the gun on the ground, the top of it reaches the midway point of his abdomen. It’s as if Rick Moranis had a normal sized Nerf gun laying around his house after shrinking his kids in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Perhaps more impressive than the contraption’s sheer size is the fact it has the ability to shoot makeshift Nerf darts at an astounding 40 mph. Essentially a Nerf rocket launcher, Rober’s DIY project was completed by inserting a 3,000 psi paintball tank into the grip of the gun which helps transfer pressure into its air tank. Once the trigger is pulled, the air tank releases, causing whatever’s put into the chamber to come barreling out. As the above video shows, the finished product is beyond powerful.
“The darts exit the gun at about 40 mph,” Rober stated in published YouTube video. “And they’re made of pool noodles with toilet plungers on the end, which means they can actually stick to things. So you can use it for skeet shooting or Dude Perfecting.”
Rober and his engineering team — a duo from a YouTube channel called Eclectical Engineering — even 3D-printed a projectile which they were able to shoot an astounding 130 yards. As is typical with Mark’s prior projects (i.e. the semi-automatic snowball launcher), he felt it necessary to try out his newest invention on his nieces and nephews who just so happened to be picking on him.
That’s all fun and games, sure, but the real entertainment started when the engineering trio decided to swap the air system for a black powder cannon. To test the upgraded giant Nerf gun, the team headed to a desert seemingly in the middle of nowhere to fire more 3D-printed projectiles, only this time they also had a few wooden dowels on hand and a handful of unsuspecting watermelons. Expectedly, the Nerf gun annihilates the watermelons, leaving nothing but a few chunks of rind in its wake.
It goes without say that Mark Rober knows a thing or two about how to have fun. We know what you’re thinking, how do I build one of these for myself? Luckily, the guys at Eclectical Engineering put together a handy walkthrough for anyone interested in fabricating one of their own. Office Nerf wars just won’t be the same with one of these at the ready.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
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Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
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.