Just a few short years ago, Monoprice wasn’t even in the 3D printer market, and was instead focusing on its expansive accessory business. Fast-forward to today, and the company is now the top 3D printer manufacturer in the world, and the entry-level $200 Select Mini is the best-selling 3D printer by a factor of three.
Don’t think for a minute that Monoprice is stopping there, however. Shane Igo, the company’s vice president of product management, stopped by the Digital Trends booth at CES 2018 on Thursday morning to detail Monoprice’s efforts, as well as show updates to the best-sellling Mini and introduce a massive new 3D printer called the Delta Pro.
Starting with the third-generation Mini, Igo says Monoprice focused on making improvements that will further solidify its lead in the market — most notably its “out-of-the-box” operation. Version 3 also adds auto-leveling (especially important for beginners) and a touchscreen, making it easier to operate than ever before.
What we’re really excited about is the Delta Pro, however. This massive printer takes the build area of the Mini and increases it by 10 times. This allows for printing of much taller objects, and at a price of around $1,000, it will be one of the largest print areas at that price point.
If you remember the Delta, which we reviewed late last year and debuts in April for $159 (and was one of our CES 2017 award winners), the Delta Pro also uses the same configuration where the print head is suspended by three arms that can better move it through three-dimensional space. It’s not a new concept — some other companies are already using it — but it definitely speeds up printing.
Igo said a 9-inch-tall vase that he was printing would be complete in about three hours, versus the six to eight hours it would take with traditional 3D printing methods. Another thing about the Delta? It’s really quiet. According to Igo, it produces only 44 decibels of noise, practically unheard of in this industry, no pun intended.
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.