Nimuno Loops Toy Block Compatible Adhesive Tape is the hottest thing to hit IndieGoGo since the Pebble Watch. The tape is like nothing you’ve ever seen – it is designed with a series of bumps on the surface that are compatible with Lego, Mega Bloks, Kreo, and other toy brick building systems. The tape becomes a platform for your mad LEGO skills. Stick your bricks to your shoes, your bicycle or anywhere else your heart desires.
Cape Town Industrial engineers Anine Kirsten and Max Basler are the dynamic duo behind Team Nimuno and the Nimuno Loops adhesive tape. Working in their free time on their own computers, Kirsten and Basler brought the tape from concept to prototype in a workspace they carved out of Basler’s garage. Along the rocky road of research and design, the pair has been receiving guidance and advice from the talented folks at Chrome Cherry Design network. The engineers spent more than a year fleshing out the details for their innovative Lego tape.
Team Nimuno is turning towards crowdfunding to finish off the prototyping and begin production of their tape. The team set a goal of $8,000 for this final stage of development, but their campaign has blown this early goal out of the water, earning 10,101 percent of its original target. As of March 15, the Nimun0 loop has been backed by more than 22,000 supporters who collectively have donated over $800,000 to the project. And with a month left to go, the project has a good shot at crossing the $1 million mark.
Available in a variety of colors, the Nimuno Loops cost $11 for two rolls of the tape (2 meters), $22 for 4 rolls (4 meters) and $34 for six rolls (6 meters). You get your pick of four colors — red, blue, green, or grey. The tape is expected to ship in July 2017.
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.