Real talk: On top of everything I said about how much the Nintendo 64 meant to me, Lego was also my jam. Castles, military forts, metropolises, you name it, I’ve built it. Although I’ve never had the opportunity to go to the Legoland themepark, I may need to think ahead about spring break now that Legoland the hotel is set to open ahead of schedule.
Although the press release was unclear to name when the original launch date was, it did toot the California-based Legoland Hotel opening date of April 5, 2013. The three-story, 250-room hotel boast separate sleeping areas for adults and kids along with treasure chests that are unlockable after guests have completed an clues-type hunt throughout the room. Naturally, kids quarters are bunk bed style – because they have to play up on the whole stacking blocks theme around here. So far, Legoland Hotel offers three themed room types: Pirate, Adventure, and Kingdom. My personal favorite is the Kingdom; it comes with a Lego frog prince, snail, and crown! It’s an epic childhood that’s never too late to have.
Outside the rooms, guests also have immediate access to the pools, lounge, themepark, and waterpark. Expect to see approximately 3,422 Lego models scattered across the vicinity. Legoland Hotel is offering a deal of two free children’s admissions to Legoland and Sea Life Aquarium with two adult ticket purchases if you book before the year’s end. Nobody likes a belated Christmas gift, but I think kids will make an exception if it’s for a vacation at the best place on earth (sorry, Disneyland). Reservations begin at $309 per night.
Of course, if you can’t wait until April and have extra cash to burn, Lego-themed hotels already exist in England and Denmark if you’re up for a quick hop across the pond.
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.