Sony’s RX100-series cameras are well known for providing some of the best image quality one can get without going to a larger, interchangeable lens camera. The latest version, the RX100 IV, also introduced some pretty incredible movie features, like 4K resolution and the ability to capture bursts of HD video at a blistering 250 frames per second.
None of that was enough for filmmaker Phillip Bloom, who has traveled the world shooting projects for numerous clients, from the BBC to CNN, but who is equally known for his love of novel filmmaking technology. He was a pioneer of DSLR video and has been tapped by manufacturers to produce product announcement videos, such as his Panasonic GH3 launch film, Genesis.
So when Bloom took his Sony RX100 IV to Las Vegas, it was no ordinary RX100 IV. Instead, as first seen in PetaPixel and explained in detail by Bloom in a blog post, it had its infrared-blocking filter removed and replaced by a special infrared pass filter, a service provided by a company called Life Pixel. With this modification, Bloom’s camera can record video beyond the range of light visible to the human eye. It is his latest of now three cameras that have been modified for this purpose.
The process of infrared photography is nothing new, but by combining it with such a compact, capable camera, the results of Bloom’s experiment are striking. The finished piece (as much as an experiment is ever finished) is simply titled “Las Vegas in Infrared” and was shot primarily using the RX100 IV’s 250 FPS video burst mode from the seat of a car as Bloom drove through Vegas. The slow movement of people on the sidewalks and the strange colors, accompanied by Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, show the city in a way that is both recognizable yet strangely foreign. It could easily serve as the intro to some sort of dystopian science fiction film.
For more details on the project and the camera that made it possible, head over to Philip Bloom’s blog.
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.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
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.