Hasta La Gadget!

(Credit: Skyflash)

It might look like a recipe for disaster, or at least a trip to the hospital, but a German inventor is trying to take to the skies with a jetpack that’s designed to race along a runway before flying.

Inspired by daredevil Felix Baumgartner, Fritz Unger wants to soar like a bird by strapping wings and two jet engines to his back.

That hasn’t happened yet, but his Skyflash jetpack has lifted him off the ground for an instant as he rolled along at 34 mph.

Face down, Unger lies on four wheels strapped to his body while the jetpack propels him horizontally, as seen in the Daily Planet vid below, as well as this one. He has also used it to travel over snow on a sled.

The wings are made of wood and weigh about 9 pounds each, with the entire kit weighing about 55 pounds. The outer wing parts can bend and create lift.

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Now that I’ve spent the past week using Able Planet’s newly released behind-the-ear “personal sound amplifier,” I’ve learned that I don’t hear as well as I like to think. Everything sounds crisper and perkier with the device.

Of course, that isn’t necessarily what I want in every environment. I’ll spare you the details, but you don’t really need to amplify sound when you’re going to the bathroom. Nor should crossing your legs in corduroys or pulling a slice of bread out of the plastic bread bag feel so… tingly. With the rather clumsily named PS1600BTE, sometimes the smallest background noises become so bright that it’s downright distracting.

The PS1600BTE is worn behind the ear and available online for $850 a pair.

(Credit: Able Planet)

In the intended noisier environments, however, these amplifiers feel like magic, even to someone who likes to think she’s got stellar hearing. What’s interesting is that it wasn’t until I removed the device from each ear that I realized how much duller and more jumbled the sounds in noisy environments were. The PS1600BTE is like icing on a cake I didn’t know existed.

The behind-the-ear device is meant to help even people with normal hearing in noisy environ… [Read more]

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When you meet your girlfriend at a Battlestar Galactica party, you better have something special lined up for an engagement ring when you eventually propose to her. I mean, really lay some cubits out and show her how special she is. That’s what happened with Disturbedrobot, so he decided to propose with a ring that looks like a Cylon.

He took the gold and diamonds from his grandmother’s ring and had his sketches modeled in Maya. After that, it was reforged by jewelry craftsperson Craig Elliott into this lovely ring. His fiancé is a lucky lady and now this guy has made it tougher for the rest of us men by raising the geek bar so high.

Best Cylon ring ever.

[via Obvious Winner]

You probably assume hackers are using all sorts of devious viruses, obscure scripts, “exploits” (whatever that means, right?) and other complex means to break into accounts. But often the means of entry are stupid simple. Facebook has a huge one—and doesn’t care about fixing it. More »

I was one of the millions of people who waited for hours in line to get a copy of Diablo III. I’m also one of the many people who are severely disappointed with how the game turned out. There may be hope for gamers wanting to try out the game’s upcoming PS3 and PS4 release though, because it has at least one advantage over the PC and MAC versions: offline multiplayer.

Strangely enough, Blizzard’s blog post and press release announcing the console port don’t make a big deal of this feature, which I’m sure is sorely missed by Diablo II players. The press release simply says, “Players will be able to battle their way through the story in single-player mode and also experience the hack-and-slash joy of destroying demons and collecting loot together with their friends via seamless four-player online and local co-op modes.” Blizzard Production Director John Hight did mention the same feature in an interview with GameTrailers’ Geoff Keighley (skip to 2:35 for the relevant part). Sadly Keighley did not press Blizzard whether or not the single-player mode will have an offline mode as well. I guess we’re going to know more later this March at PAX East, where the PS3 port of the game will be playable.

As someone who doesn’t have a high end – or even average-end – Internet connection, the always online requirement of Diablo III is one of my biggest complaints about the game. I wonder if Blizzard is considering making offline modes available across the board.

But the main reason I stopped playing Diablo III is its Auction House. For me, the appeal of Diablo is the chance of acquiring good loot. As it is, the game’s loop and immersion is broken for me. I hope – for the sake of the people who are going to buy the console versions of the game, I’m not going to be talked into buying this thing twice – that Diablo III on the PS3 and PS4 also gets rid of the Auction House and just hikes up drop rates for loot.

[via Joystiq]