Invented by Frank Zapata in 2012, Flyboarding (aka, using one of those water jet hover board things) has grown from a novelty into a full-fledged competitive sport. Now, Zapata Racing is prepared to revolutionize the field again — this time with the Flyboard Air, a hover board that does away with the water propulsion system and uses only air to zip you across the sky. If you ever dreamed about being the Green Goblin, here’s your chance.
Related Offer: See here for the latest gadget deals at the Digital Trends Shop
The original Flyboard was groundbreaking, but it had some major limitations. The Flyboard used a stream of high pressure water that pushed the rider up to 30 feet in the air and allowed them to move over the surface of the water. To generate this powerful thrust, the rider had to be connected to a personal watercraft via a long hose that carried the high-pressure water stream from the watercraft to the nozzles underneath the fly board. The pressure was adjustable, providing riders with control over the thrust so they could move themselves higher or lower as desired. The system was very maneuverable with advanced riders able to perform acrobatic maneuvers like flips, twists and turns in mid air.
Riders, though, had to be conscious of the hose that connected the board to the jet ski and were limited in how far and high they could go. In the new Flyboard Air, riders are now untethered thanks to an integrated turbine engine and are free to fly as high as 10,000 feet. According to Zapata Racing, the unit is capable of flying as fast as 90 miles per hour and has enough power for a 10 minute flight.
In a demonstration video, Zapata is shown flying effortlessly over a body of water, reaching a height of 30 meters (98 feet) and a speed of 55 km/h (34MPH) during the 3.5 minute flight. The unit is still in the prototype stage and will continue to undergo testing and refinement for the remainder of 2016. With a successful public flight under his belt, Zapata is now on par with David Mayman and Nelson Tyler, who last year demonstrated their JB-9 jetpack by flying around the Statue of Liberty.
But of course, not everyone is convinced that it’s real. Numerous commenters on Facebook and YouTube claim that the video is fake, and that the whole demonstration was staged — some even said they can see wires in certain shots. But Zapata Racing quickly dispelled these rumors by posting a second video on Facebook shortly thereafter. These guys have been working on Flyboard Air for over four years, and unless they spent all that time making two very elaborate hoax videos, then it appears that their device is legit.
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.