Online retailer Monoprice announced on January 5 at CES that it was expanding its popular 3D printing lineup with several new printer models that target both home and professional users. The new printers run the gamut and include an upgraded version of the firm’s $199 Select Mini printer and the company’s first professional stereolithography (SLA) printer.
Known for its affordable and high quality computer accessories, Monoprice is a recent entrant to the 3D printer market, and has already seen great success in the field, recording 600-percent sales growth in the category in 2016. The company hopes to continue this trend with two 3D printer models designed for beginning hobby users.
The $149 MP Delta Mini 3D printer, Monoprice’s low-cost, entry-level printer, features Wi-Fi for easy, out-of-the-box printing. Also in the home user category, Monoprice updated its Select Mini printer to version 2.0, adding community-inspired upgrades to the unit.
On the commercial side, Monoprice debuted the MP 3 Series Commercial 3D printer for $799. Ideal for industrial and rapid commercial prototyping, the printer has a full enclosure for printing, a 400 x 400mm build volume, and the latest in FDM technology. The company also entered the SLA resin market with the new MP Maker Prism Professional SLA Resin printer. This $3,500 printer offers professional quality printing at an impressive 0.03-micron layer resolution, making it perfect for prototyping, jewelry, and other projects that require a high level of printing accuracy.
Keeping true to its roots, Monoprice also unveiled a new Onyx Series 3.5 mm audio cable as well as several new USB 3.0 and USB-C cables. Besides its printers, the company is moving beyond the home office market and entering the home appliance category with a new blender, an induction cooktop, and a sous vide precision cooker.
Monoprice will begin offering its new 3D printers, home appliances, and more starting in the first quarter of 2017, and continuing throughout the year.
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.