Weekend Edition
Bee drones, sea drones, canon cams and more!
Brilliantly Bad Ideas
Why just video trespassers when you can tear gas them?
A Slovenian startup called Paintcam invented the PaintCam Eve, a home security camera that shoots paintballs or tear gas at anyone it doesn’t recognize. It uses face recognition to identify friend or foe, then, like RoboCop, gives five seconds to vacate the porch before opening fire. (Make sure you add literally everyone you know into the face recognition database or risk tear-gassing grandma.) Also: The product reveals a naive-to-the-point-of-adorable mindset about how crime works. Non-lethal, annoying munitions turn a would-be burglar (or cookie-selling girl scout) into a criminal (who knows where you live) hellbent on revenge.
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This bee drone swarms, but doesn’t sting
The New York-based company, Festo, created the BionicBee — a drone that swarms like a bee. It’s only 30 grams and 22 cm in length with a 24 cm wingspan. Using indoor GPS and bee-to-bee communication, a large number can swarm without crashing into each other. Now if only they could teach it to make honey.
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The Pentagon is building an underwater drone that hunts submarines
The Manta Ray is an uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) — a water drone — being developed by DARPA in partnership with Northrop Grumman and other companies. Its purpose is to move around the world’s oceans in packs or swarms, with some Manta Rays outfitted with tracking gear while others in the swarm armed to the teeth with anti-submarine torpedoes. While the tech specs are classified, the intent is to combine low-power, high-efficiency propulsion with the ability to harvest its own energy under water. I want one.
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Call it the Polaroid of poetry
Roses are red. Violets take time. This camera snaps, and out comes a rhyme. Knuckleheads Kelin Carolyn Zhang and Ryan Mather invented a Raspberry Pi gadget called the Poetry Camera that takes a picture, uploads it to ChatGPT-4, then returns back an AI-generated poem based on the snap, which is then printed out by the camera. The poems are original, and take the form of a haiku, sonnet or free verse, depending on the preference of the poemtographer.
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Designer imagines if Apple made a Rabbit R1-style iPhone
A Serbian design outfit called Phone Industry mocked up what they called the iPhone 16s concept. It imagines an alternative reality where the Rabbit R1 form factor was so desirable that Apple wanted to jump on that bandwagon.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Why you’ll soon have a digital clone of your own
Researchers develop malicious AI ‘worm’ targeting generative AI systems
Read ELGAN.COM for more!
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