Technology is going to the dogs – literally. And the latest to join this furry fray is Woof, an ambitious new app that gives dog owners a bevy of features that aim to make their canine companions happy.
Now available on Apple iOS at the reasonable price of free, Woof packs in a ton of different features. You can create a profile for your pet with name, photo, age, and breed. Or you can take photos of your best friend and upload them for the whole community to see – a feature snagged straight from the mouth of Instagram.
Woof also allows you to mark your dog’s territory – as in, when you dog lifts his leg to let fellow furballs know he’s been there, you can place a pin on the app’s integrated map. If any Woof users happen upon your dog’s mark, Woof will let you know that someone is “sniffing” you … or something.
We’re not exactly sold on the whole territory marking thing, but there are some more practical features built into Woof as well. For example, you can easily look to see if any other Woof users are nearby, making puppy playtime meetups a breeze. And the app shows you the locations of parks in your area, and lists whatever “amenities” they might have, from fountains to fences to off-leash regulations.
After spending a few days using Woof, we found the app to be quite handy when looking for a good place to take a walk. It’s still in its early stage, however, and the app has suffered a number of bugs. But hey – every dog takes some time to master all its tricks, right?
Side note: There is an Android app called Woof, as well – but they aren’t the same thing. The Android Woof is an Italian social networking app for dog owners in Italy, just in case you google woof and get confused.
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.