Hasta La Gadget!

Hugs make bad days more bearable. But what do you do if you live alone or don’t really have anyone close by who’s willing to hug you?

I know that sounds sad, but don’t get too upset because Melissa Kit Chow, Andy Payne, and Phil Seaton from MIT have come up with a solution for you: virtual hugs.

The puffy vest might look like something you’d see on an avant garde fashion runway, but it’s got a techie touch. It’s actually called the Like-a-Hug, and for a good reason: it inflates and gives the wearer a ‘hug’ every time someone ‘likes’ a status, photo, or video that the wearer has posted on Facebook.

Like-A-Hug is a wearable social media vest that allows for hugs to be given remotely, bringing us closer despite physical distance. Hugs can also be sent back to the original sender by squeezing the vest and deflating it.

It’s just an art installation but it’s not very hard to figure out what its deeper meaning is.

[via Neatorama]

The species of legendary Jedi master Yoda is one of the mysteries of Star Wars. Whatever he is, all we know is that he’s small and green. If you ever wondered what he’d look like if he had more or less the same skin as humans, sculptor Andrea Eusebi has a possible answer. Also, you wonder about strange things.

Like child of elf and hobbit, Yoda bust looks. Hmmmm.

Eusebi finished this particular bust way back in August, but if I’m not mistaken he’s still willing to make more if you want to buy one from him. Head to Facebook to contact Eusebi and to browse more images of his amazing work.

[via Andrea Eusebi via Endless Geyser of Awesome]

If you’re feeling overheated, you can always buy one of those “cooling mist” sprays, but they are typically just water or menthol in a spray can. This unique invention from Japan really is ice cold to the touch.

Simply spray some Cold Foam cooling gel on a flat surface, give it a second to firm up, then pick it up. The stuff comes out of the can and instantly reaches a chilly temperature of -17°C (~1.4°F). The stuff comes out of the can sort of like Silly String, but can be shaped once hardened – the example provided is to use it to make a cooling wristband, but I imagine you could make a headband or just a cold orb you hold in your hand if you want. The cooling effect wears off after about five minutes though, and then you just need to dispose of it.

Here’s some video footage from ShiftEast showing off how some of these unusual cooling Japanese products work on your skin.

Cold Foam sells for ¥639 (~$8 USD) per can over at Japan’s NigiShow. You might also want to keep an eye out on Strapya-World, their worldwide sister store to see if you can purchase these outside of Japan. I have a feeling since they’re aerosol cans filled with various nasty chemicals, that you won’t be able to.

One of the defining features of Diablo III is my utter disappointment with it. Another is its skill system, which lets players shuffle their characters’ learned skills at any point in the game. On the other hand, Torchlight II uses a more traditional skill tree system. Players can only reallocate the last three skill points they used, otherwise they’re stuck with their build. Unless you had an item called a Potion of Respec, which lets you reallocate all of your skill points. This hack lets you have as many bottles of that potion as you want.

The hack involves replacing a file inside a folder in the Torchlight II application with an edited version, which was uploaded by Runic Games Fansite member chewtoy. That edited file will fill the player’s Shared Stash with Potions of Respec. That’s 40 potions, but I guess you can re-paste the file if you need more. Here’s a guide courtesy of YouTuber MaguzEx. Skip to 1:10 in the video for the walkthrough:

You can download the edited file on Runic Games Fansite. Note that doing this will essentially replace whatever is in your Shared Stash with the potions, so be sure to move the contents of your Shared Stash elsewhere before doing this hack if you don’t want to lose those items. I highly recommend backing up your saves just in case something goes wrong. Also, other members of RGF seem to be having trouble making the hack work in non-Steam copies of Torchlight II, i.e. the hack might not work if you didn’t buy the game from Steam.

[via GameRanx]

A group of scientists from Scotland have an insane idea to help reverse the effects of global warming here on Earth. The scientists think they can grab a near-Earth asteroid called 1036 Ganymed and use it to him to create a massive dust cloud to block some of the Sun’s energy from warming the Earth. The scientists say that they only need to reduce 1.7% of the solar radiation that hits the Earth to offset a global temperature increase of 3.6°F.

The plan is rather far-out, and even the scientists admit that it’s no replacement for curbing greenhouse gas emissions here on Earth. The scientists envision using some sort of “mass driver” that can be used to push the asteroid to Lagrange point L1. Lagrange point L1 is where gravity from the Sun and the Earth cancel each other out.

Once there, the mass driver could then be used to blow a massive cloud of dust and debris off the asteroid to block sunlight. The dust cloud would need a mass of about 11 million-billion pounds and span about 1600 miles wide. I wonder if a slight miscalculation in the size of the dust cloud might block more sun than they intend and plunge the Earth into an Ice Age.

[via Livescience]