Need something to keep you busy this weekend? Look no further. The Weekend Workshop is our weekly column where we showcase a badass DIY project that you can complete with minimal skills and expertise. We’ve dug through all the online tutorials on the web, and gone the extra mile to pinpoint projects that are equal parts easy, affordable, and fun. So put on your work pants, grab your tool belt, and head to the garage — it’s time to start building!
Culling inspiration from 19th century steam-powered machinery, the science fiction subgenre of steampunk has long lived in the pages of such esteemed authors as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Though the exact term originated sometime in the 1980s as a somewhat humorous alternative to cyberpunk, the subgenre has seen a resurgence of popularity in pop culture over the last decade. Films like or the Guy Ritchie-adapted Sherlock Holmes films embraced the style and essentially built entire stories around it.
Beyond its impact on film and television, steampunk has also been a particularly popular style among DIYers and craftmakers. Typically comprised of a unique blend of digital and handmade, steampunk-themed projects often evoke a sense of futuristic history — think Victorian-era aesthetics adorning modern technology. What does this have to do with Weekend Workshop, you ask? Two words: steampunk goggles.
Thanks to some savvy design work by an Instructables user known as Dreamchronic, anybody with a spare caulking tube, a little spray paint, and some electrical tape can construct their own steampunk goggles in a matter of hours. To help you get started on these Burning Man-approved goggles, we’ve sifted through the Instructables walkthrough to find exactly what’s needed for the build. Most of the items can be found around the house, though a few may require a trip to a hardware store. Here’s what you need to begin:
After gathering the required tools and materials, it’s now time to start constructing your own pair (or pairs) of steampunk-certified goggles. Simply follow Dreamchronic’s comprehensive step-by-step walk-through and in a matter of hours you’ll look like an extra on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road. Happy building!
The complete guide on building these DIY steampunk goggles can be found here.
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.