Bicycle chains can be a real drag. The keyed U-locks and combination cables that keep your bike safe are difficult to haul around, being not only heavy but also bulky. A decent cable lock can’t be compressed enough to fit in a saddle bag, and it’ll get in the way of your pedaling when mounted on your top tube (or sit like a dead weight in your cycling backpack).
There has to be a better way. In fact, there is.
A group of cycling enthusiasts frustrated with existing locks came up with Tex-Lock, a flexible and lightweight cable lock that’s as secure as existing metal locks but at a fraction of the weight. Unlike existing locks that utilize metal as their core material, Tex-Lock uses a textile-based rope material that is manufactured in layers. There is a decorative shield on the outside that protects from water and fire, and it contains cut-resistant layers.
The textile is braided into a chain flexible enough to fit into the front pocket of a shell, yet robust enough to resist cutting by bolt cutters and even fracturing by ice spray. In fact, the colder it gets, the stronger the textile fabric becomes. It also is heat resistant and will maintain its integrity even under a direct flame.
Tex-Lock is secure, but its biggest benefit is that it is travel-friendly. The flexible cable can be coiled to fit into small bags and jacket pockets. It is also soft, which means it can dangle off your top tube and not scratch your bike or bruise your legs. The fabric rope is lightweight weighing no more than 350 grams (about 12 ounces) per meter, which is minuscule when compared to metal bicycle locks which can weigh over 4 pounds, depending on their construction.
Tex-Lock is being sold as a Kickstarter-funded project with an estimated ship date of August 2017. The entry level short Tex-Lock costs approximately $100, while the XL version will set you back $120. All versions include a padlock and bracket to attaches the lock to your bicycle.
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.