Brilliant Weekend Edition

An e-ink newspaper (sort of), a robot that will make your skin crawl, AI hot sauce, a LEGO mouse, brilliantly good ideas and more!

FACEBOOK — I mean Meta — launched its Threads Twitter clone social network this week and got 70 million sign-ups in the first 48 hours. Already we’ve learned that if you delete your Threads account, Meta will also delete your Instagram account as punishment. The app-only social net uses dark patterns to trick users, has no chronological timeline (Meta promised that for later), is not available in Europe (and may never be because of regulatory barriers) and banned me, personally, from the outset as a longtime critic of Meta. It’s all very Zuckerbergian.

Are you on Threads? Let me know what you think of it in the comments.

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Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas

1. $3,000 e-ink newspaper shows only the front page

A device called Project E Ink started out as a personal maker project by Alexander Klöpping, but is becoming a real product. The 32-inch diagonal e-ink display weighs 18 pounds and is designed to be mounted on a wall like art. You enter the URL of your favorite newspaper, and the front page of the paper is displayed, refreshing daily to get the most recent front page. If you’d like to read the rest of any front-page story by continuing on an interior page, well, you can’t. That’s what we’re at with daily newspapers — they’re now merely decorative.

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2. Wearable robot crawls all over your body

Researchers at the Small Artifacts Lab (SMART LAB) at the University of Maryland are building a robot called Calico. The tiny robot looks like a Tribble and moves along a track sewn into your clothing, checking your vital signs like heart rate and breathing. Nobody wants this. It can detect falls and nag you to exercise, guiding you through your workout.

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3. Hot sauce recipe created by a chatbot

A hot sauce maker called Dave’s Gourmet plans to sell a hot sauce called Chil-AI created by a chatbot. The product isn’t for sale yet, but it was displayed at the 2023 Summer Fancy Food Show. The company didn’t reveal details, but I assume Dave went to ChatGPT and said: “Gimme a recipe for hot sauce” — and then they made it. The only thing hotter than Dave’s hot sauce is use of “AI” as a marketing tool.

4. New food packaging material is edible

Scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have invented food packaging that itself is edible. The packaging material looks like plastic, but is actually bio-cellulose. The idea is: Instead of throwing your food packaging away, you use your own body as a trash can and recycling center.

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5. Designers use LEGO to create a fully customizable PC mouse

South Korean designers named Subin Kim, HyoRyung Choi, Eojin Jeon, and Dohee Kim have designed and created a concept wireless mouse called Clickbrick, which is a fully functional, user-assembled LEGO mouse. Needless to say, it’s highly customizable. Just don’t step on it. I want one.

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Mike’s List of Brilliantly Good Ideas

1. Format Swap will convert just about anything to just about anything else, including picture, video and audio file formats.

2. The Hive Index is a curated index of online communities that form around any interest. Fed up with Twitter and Reddit? Find your community.

3. The Atlas of Surveillance is an EFF website where you can search your local town or city and find out all the ways you’re being surveilled by the police.

4. The Wonders of StreetView lets you click through random curated images from Google’s StreetView to remind yourself how big, varied, wonderful and kooky our world is.

5. The Casual Gym is a simple website that will get you working out right away.

6. HoodMaps lets you know where in a city you’ll find rich people, hipsters, office buildings, tourists, universities and “normies.”

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Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotions

1. How we know that Apple’s Vision Pro means business

2. Spot fake extortion attacks without wasting time and money

3. No, digital nomads aren’t pricing locals out of their homes

4. How do some companies get compromised again and again?

5. Read ELGAN.COM for more!

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Mike’s Location: Silicon Valley, California

(Why Mike is always traveling.)