Brilliantly Bad Weekend Edition
Brilliantly Bad Weekend Edition
Gestures watches, Pencil AirTags, influencer clones, beer jackets and more!
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. Add “the Clapper” functionality to all your gadgets
The SnapSync Band-1 is a wristwatch-like wearable that enables hand gestures that control other electronics. The watch detects micro vibrations and arm movement — it can detect snapping, clapping, double-tapping, sweeps of the arms and twists of the wrist — which can be sent as commands to other devices via services like IFTTT, Google Home, Home Kit and other platforms that accept external commands. Clap twice to turn lights on and off (like “The Clapper”), snap twice to brew coffee and wave your hand dismissively to end your Zoom call.
2. Now you can attach an AirTag to your Apple Pencil
Nobody’s a bigger AirTag enthusiast than I. Now, the PencilSense — an AirTag Adapter For Apple Pencil — gives me an excuse to buy another AirTag. It’s basically a plastic AirTag holder that slips over the end of the Pencil. Once attached, the Pencil looks like a giant AirPod.
3. China is cloning influencers so the influencing never stops
Chinese e-commerce platforms are using AI-generated clones of their most popular influencers so they can keep the sales pitch going 24/7. In fact, an entire industry of Avatars as a Service (AaaS) companies have sprung up to duplicate influencers. (The going rate for such an avatar is just over $1,000.) The AI clones are controlled by scripts, which are also AI-generated. Humans merely enter the product name and price and AI does the rest. One AaaS company, called Silicon Intelligence, wants to create 100 million “silicon-based laborers.”
4. This jacket stays cool in summer the same way you do — with beer
Puffy jackets are great for keeping you warm in the cold. But a new garment called the Tiger Summer Puffer keeps you cool in the heat. Designed by Izzy Du, the jacket uses beer as the coolant. Cans or bottles of cold beer is added to the jacket, then a series of tubes pump beer-cooled water throughout the jacket.
Mike’s List of Shameless Self-Promotions
How the FBI fights back now against cyber attacks
Why consumer drones represent a special cybersecurity risk
Read ELGAN.COM for more!
Mike’s Location: Essaouira, Morocco
(Why Mike is always traveling.)
In these modern times China a previous victim of the colonial era, now affectionately known as the industrial knock-off capital of the world, is having it's issues in simulating modern day colonialism, in other words they are not doing a great job wearing the hat of a huge military colonizer bully, meaning their modern day corporate colonialism bullying is looking more like a future fail for China. As if they didn't have enough problems. Lately their island hopping in the southern pacific, railroads to everywhere, and tofu-dreg ship designs, * well, all those seem looking like bad empire-builder knock-offs.
* Nowadays, even official Chinese propaganda productions for world wide distribution look increasingly like a poorly produced knock-off of a bad knock-off.
For a second I thought it said you were in Mexico and I thought WTH, he was just in Morocco.