Hasta La Gadget!

Are you the kind of person that’s worried about Big Brother and those CCTV cameras all over the place? So you don’t want your face on camera feeds? Then these specs might be for you.

These glasses fitted with LEDs were created by Isao Echizen and Seiichi Goshi at the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. The glasses emit near IR light, which prevents current facial recognition cameras and software from figuring out who you are. The lights are powered by a small battery pack that needs to be transported in your pocket.

Granted, unless you’re going for some sort of Blade Runner look, they’re not particularly chic, but they get the job done. They’re also not exactly what you’d call inconspicuous, so security might still hunt you down, even though they don’t know who you are.

The researchers are working on making these specs a bit more fashionable. They predict that the final model will cost around $1(USD) to manufacture.

[via Slate via DVice]

It’s a hassle having to look through various drawers to find a battery that’s in the size you need. It’s even a larger hassle if you have a bunch of batteries but can’t find one in the size you need. Panasonic’s emergency flashlight took that into consideration by allowing people to use it with batteries in various sizes.

For everything else, there’s the Battery.Family.

It’s basically four 1.5-volt batteries housed in one huge size D battery. With each ‘family’, you get a size C, size AA, and size AAA battery aside from the D-sized one. The AAA actually contains the power source, while each of the larger casings just contain the contacts to fit the appropriately-sized battery. It’s like those Russian Matryoshka stacking dolls, but in battery form.

Battery.Family was designed by Soohwan Kim, Junho Yoon, Dohoon Lee and Hyojin Park and it is, unfortunately, just a concept design for now. But here’s to hoping.

[via Yanko Design]

Even though they’re much more awesome than conventional printers, 3D printers still need “ink”, or what is known as filament. While this can come in many forms – sand, chocolate, living cells – most projects require plastic filament. There are many companies that sell filament, but wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just make your own?

That’s the idea behind Tyler McNaney’s invention, the Filabot. According to Wired, Tyler got the idea to make Filabot because he wanted to dive into 3D printing but didn’t have a lot of money to buy filament. What the Filabot does is reduce the process of making filament into a small, personal scale. It melts various types of plastic – including commonly used ones such as PET, HDPE and ABS – extrudes or forces the molten plastic through nozzles and flattens them to the users’ desired diameter using rollers. This way you can turn plastic bottles, packaging and even old or failed 3D printed objects into filament.

Tyler already raised $32,330 (USD) from a recent Kickstarter campaign, where he sold Filabots for as low as $350 (USD) each. For now you can sign up for an email notification on the Filabot website to know when you can turn your little brother’s LEGO into a 3D printed turd. Just kidding. It’s inevitable though.

[Filabot via Gajitz via Reddit]

Dell Wyse – the cloud computing company acquired by Dell in May 2012 – may soon be entering its bet on the emerging PC on a stick genre. While the previous examples of these flash drive computers we’ve seen use Android as their primary operating system, Dell’s product will also run on Android, but will give customers the freedom to choose from different OSes to actually use.

Currently known as “Project Ophelia,” the computer is meant to be used mainly as a gateway to Dell Wyse’s cloud services. According to Quartz, “It allows access to Windows, Mac OS, Google’s Chrome OS, Dell’s custom cloud solutions, Citrix cloud software, and even Google’s Chrome OS, using virtual instances of those operating systems running in the cloud.” The PC will plug into (and draw power from) a display via USB. Then it will connect to Dell Wyse’s servers via Wi-Fi and to hardware peripherals via Bluetooth.

Dell’s vice president of cloud operations Tarkan Maner said that they’re planning to sell Ophelia for only $50 (USD) each, though he didn’t mention how much the cloud services would cost. That’s probably where they’ll generate most of their revenue.

From a tech support perspective, this could make it a lot easier to secure and manage a large number of computers. But I wonder if it also poses a risk of data theft, disconnection or lack of access on a massive scale should things go wrong. It also takes away a lot of control from the user in return for the convenience it provides. Either way, it’s too early to see what kind of effect Ophelia may have on the PC industry.

[via Quartz via Boy Genius Report]

The ready availability and widespread usage of surveillance technology is enough to drive most level-headed people paranoid. Drones, hidden and visible security cameras, sensors, communications tracing systems… they’re all around us and at any given moment, they could be used to track your whereabouts and monitor your every move.

People have been protesting these technologies for use, with news that various government organizations employ them on a regular basis. No one has been more vocal about them than designer Adam Harvey, who made his stand clear through his newest fashion collection called ‘Stealth Wear.’

The pieces in his collection stay true to his message, with one them being dubbed as the ‘anti-drone hoodie’, which is crafted from a metalized material that makes it impossible for drones to detect your thermal image with their sensors. Then there’s the ‘XX-shirt’, which I presume protects against X-rays since it’s supposed to “protect your heart from X-ray radiation.”

Harvey explains: “Military technology is coming home from the war. These pieces are designed to live with it, to cope with it–to live in a world where surveillance is happening all the time.”

I think it’s an awesome thing that he’s doing with ‘Stealth Wear.’ What do you think?

[via Slate via Dvice]