The Space Shuttle, the actual Shuttle created by NASA, was the bar for how high-tech things could get when I was a kid. Today, the toys my kids play have computing power that dwarfs the Space Shuttle of my youth! That’s not a typo. Nowhere is this trend more evident than the annual TTPM spring showcase. TTPM stands for “Time to Play Magazine” or its newer, fresher, online meaning “Toys, Tots, Pets & More.”
The event showcases the top toys that the kids in your life will soon be begging you for. STEM-focused toys (Science Technology Engineering Math) are a win-win for parents who hope they can trick — I mean, encourage — their children to learn while playing. LittleBits, which has traditionally focused on teaching kids about electricity, circuitry, and robotics, now has a Buy Now . It comes with eight bits, six accessories, and an invention guide book. Kids create things they then can code to do other things, like a guitar that actually plays notes via a electronic slider. There’s even an online community where users share their ideas, meaning this toy has virtually endless playability.
Ozobots, which start at just over $50, also teach coding through apps and even markers and paper. You code commands for your Ozobot to follow, which can mean simply moving around, or doing battle with other Ozobots. Snap on a Marvel “head,” and the bots actually take on the personality traits of those characters, including a cast of familiar faces from Spiderman and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Telescopes that use some sort of digital component to help you find the stars aren’t terribly new, but the $90 Galaxy Tracker Smart Telescope does it differently: It uses your phone. You stick it up top near the lens and launch the popular Star Walk 2 app, which guides you towards celestial objects you might be able to see, and even offers up information on what you’re looking at. Once you spot something, a custom mount lets you stick your phone onto the eyepiece to snap stills or record video of what the telescope is seeing.
As far as clever names go, Goliath’s “Disc Jock-e” is clever — some might argue more clever than the actual toy. It’s a Bluetooth disc (or Frisbee to most people) that you can chuck clear across the yard as your favorite band blares out of it. How does it sound? Well, exactly as you probably imagine it would sound to hurl a Bluetooth speaker across the yard: It gets louder as you’re catching, and hard to hear after throwing. It is waterproof though, so for $25, it might be worth giving it a shot at a pool. After all, that’s one of the last places you’d probably prefer to chuck around your higher end (more expensive) Bluetooth speaker.
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.