Tech Point

  Sometimes you see a product and you’re like “Wow, that’s so futuristic.” Then you remember you’re living in 2017, 20 years after the date that a sentient AI wiped out most of humanity in the original Terminator movie, and you think: “Huh, maybe we’re living in the future already .” So it is with these amazing LED eyelashes. They’re called f.lashes, and they’re the creation of designer Tien Pham, who first showed them off at Maker Faire earlier this year. Encouraged by the reaction he received, Pham has now launched a Kickstarter to make his wearable electronics into a commercial product, and has already attracted more than double his $40,000 target. F.lashes are tiny strips of LEDs that you stick to your eyelids with lash adhesive. There’s an annoying, bulky controller and a connecting wire you have to hide somewhere (best bet: in your hair), but once that’s in place, the effect is amazing. The f.lashes come in seven different colors, and light up in various pa

  On-ear and over-ear headphones generally tend to offer dramatically better sound than smaller, in-ear buds. The trade-off is, in exchange for better music, you have to carry around the bulkier, larger devices. But what if you didn’t? What if you could roll up a pair of on-ear headphones and just stow them in a jacket pocket like you do a pair of earbuds? That’s the idea behind the Luzli Roller MK01, a pair of handcrafted stainless steel and aluminum headphones that feature a headband similar to a metal link bracelet on a watch. The flexible band allows them to roll up into a compact and portable package. According to Luzli, the Roller MK01 features 22 separate stainless steel springs built into the headband, allowing the 13 links to move and conform to the wearer’s head. Each pair comes in a wooden display case and a suede travel bag, along with a few other more normal accessories, like spare earpads, a cl

Toyota recently completed its first in-home trial of its new Human Support Robot. The Japanese auto giant built the HSR to help people with disabilities perform everyday tasks around the home, like open doors and fetch water bottles. In this case, the robot was delivered to the home of a US Army vet who is paraplegic, and, as you can imagine, the results were quite heartwarming. The HSR, with its articulated torso and arm and video calling functionality, has mainly been in use in hospitals in Japan, helping with that country’s rapidly aging population. Demonstrations showed people operating the HSR remotely via a touchscreen tablet to open curtains and deliver food and water to bed-ridden family members. But this is the first time the robot has been used in someone’s private home. “a natural extension of our work as a mobility company that helps people navigate their world” Romulo “Romy” Camargo is a decorated war veteran who was wounded in Afghanis

  HTC just released the red version of its squeezable U11 phone in the US, and now it’s being marked down by $50. You can get it on sale for $599. The rest of the U11 color lineup is also available at the $50 discount, including the silver, black, and blue versions. The deal includes free shipping and is valid until July 1st — tomorrow. You can order an unlocked phone through HTC’s website and enter the code “AMAZINGU11” at checkout. A similar deal was initially available when the phone launched earlier this month. The U11’s most unique feature is its pressure-sensitive areas that respond to one-handed squeeze. You can configure a squeeze to launch different apps, turn on the flashlight, or access Google Assistant. It’s pretty gimmicky, but at least HTC tried to create something novel.

  Microsoft was planning to introduce a Surface Mini tablet alongside its Surface Pro 3 at an event in May 2014. While the Surface Pro 3 was announced to much surprise, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop canceled the Surface Mini project just weeks before. We’ve heard about the Surface Mini many times over the past few years, but Windows Central has now obtained images of the device. The Surface Mini was an 8-inch device with a 1440 x 1080 display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. Microsoft even included its typical kickstand on the Surface Mini, alongside what appears to be a rubber-style exterior that would have shipped in a variety of colors. As the Surface Mini was powered by an ARM processor, it was designed to run Windows RT and support the same Surface Pen (with a loop on the kickstand) as the bigger Surface Pro 3 tablet. Looking at the

  I like to play a game on the subway where I look around and try to find someone not on their phone. I like seeing a person reading a book, or, in an ultimate win, someone staring into space without headphones. It’s a rare find. These check-ins remind me that we, as a society, rely on our phones to distract and entertain us. Yet still, even as a hyper-aware person, I can’t even force myself to get off my own iPhone while riding the train. I try, but always think of something I have to do immediately: reply to an email, respond to my friend’s text, double-check a date in my calendar, read an article, adjust my music. Apparently everyone has something to do, too. In the 10 years since the iPhone debuted, it’s slowly eaten our personal space. Few places exist without cell service or Wi-Fi. We’re connected in locations that once seemed far removed from the busyness of the world, like on subways, airplanes, and cruise ships. NASA even sent iPhones into space. I

It’s easy to see how the iPhone changed the world 10 years ago — now pretty much every public place is packed with people peering into their palms in a way that would have been difficult to imagine before 2007. But as Steve Jobs pointed out during his famous introduction to the product, Apple was entering a market where the existing competitors weren’t all that great; they were either somewhat hard to use and dumb, or hard to use and somewhat dumb. What if Apple had entered a market with a complex, entrenched ecosystem based on advanced infrastructure and services, where devices offered an endless array of features that people actually made use of? And what if it actually succeeded in overturning this market and brought many of its advantages to the rest of the world? That would have been even more impressive. But that’s exactly what happened in Japan. The first iPhone to hit Japan was the 3G in 2008. At that point, Apple had answered two of the biggest cri

It’s easy to see how the iPhone changed the world 10 years ago — now pretty much every public place is packed with people peering into their palms in a way that would have been difficult to imagine before 2007. But as Steve Jobs pointed out during his famous introduction to the product, Apple was entering a market where the existing competitors weren’t all that great; they were either somewhat hard to use and dumb, or hard to use and somewhat dumb. What if Apple had entered a market with a complex, entrenched ecosystem based on advanced infrastructure and services, where devices offered an endless array of features that people actually made use of? And what if it actually succeeded in overturning this market and brought many of its advantages to the rest of the world? That would have been even more impressive. But that’s exactly what happened in Japan. The first iPhone to hit Japan was the 3G in 2008. At that point, Apple had answered two of the biggest cri

It’s easy to see how the iPhone changed the world 10 years ago — now pretty much every public place is packed with people peering into their palms in a way that would have been difficult to imagine before 2007. But as Steve Jobs pointed out during his famous introduction to the product, Apple was entering a market where the existing competitors weren’t all that great; they were either somewhat hard to use and dumb, or hard to use and somewhat dumb. What if Apple had entered a market with a complex, entrenched ecosystem based on advanced infrastructure and services, where devices offered an endless array of features that people actually made use of? And what if it actually succeeded in overturning this market and brought many of its advantages to the rest of the world? That would have been even more impressive. But that’s exactly what happened in Japan. The first iPhone to hit Japan was the 3G in 2008. At that point, Apple had answered two of the biggest cri

  Twickets, a popular England-based fan-to-fan ticket resale platform, is coming to the US this fall. The platform allows fans to resell unwanted tickets, with prices capped at face value (any booking fees incurred with the original purchase can be included at the seller’s discretion). Twickets then collects a 10 percent transaction fee from the buyer for each sale. Other popular ticket resale sites, like   Ticketmaster   and   StubHub , allow sellers to set their own price, often resulting in steep markups for high-profile events. When it debuts this fall, Twickets will be the first secondary market ticket platform to require face value sale in the US. If a fan wants to sell a ticket, Twickets will first check to make sure the ticket is authentic. It can then be posted, and the platform will send alerts to interested users. Once sold, there are an array of options available for delivery, including uploading an e-ticket, meeting up before the show, mailing the physical ticket,

  Facebook’s Aquila drone completed its second flight this past May during which it flew for an hour and 46 minutes. Facebook detailed the flight in   a blog post   and explained the modifications it made to the drone after the failure of the initial test. That first go somewhat failed when a 20-foot section of the wing snapped off during landing. A gust of wind knocked Aquila off its flight path, and the autopilot’s attempt to correct course resulted in the drone going faster than intended. This time around, Facebook added “hundreds of sensors” to gather additional data; modified the auto-pilot software; installed a horizontal propeller stopping mechanism to support a successful landing; and added “spoilers” to the wings, which increase drag and reduce lift during the landing approach. Understandably, Facebook goes into deep detail about how wind affects flight. The Aquila crew apparently monitors the wind throughout the day and uploads a landing plan based on the wind dire

Social media companies could face fines of €50 million for failing to remove hate speech within 24 hours   German lawmakers have   passed   a   controversial law   under which Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies could face fines of up to €50 million ($57 million) for failing to remove hate speech. The Network Enforcement Act, commonly referred to as the “Facebook law,” was passed by the Bundestag, Germany’s parliamentary body, on Friday. It will go into effect in October. Under the law, social media companies would face steep fines for failing to remove “obviously illegal” content — including hate speech, defamation, and incitements to violence — within 24 hours. They would face an initial fine of €5 million, which could rise to €50 million. Web companies would have up to one week to decide on cases that are less clear cut. Justice Minister Heiko Maas and other supporters of the bill have argued that it is necessary to curb the spread of hate speech, which is s

When I was a teenager, this time of year would be insufferable. My bedroom would be nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning, but it wasn’t even particularly hot outside. I had at least five tower PCs running inside my bedroom, all contributing a lot of heat to my tiny little room. Each performed its own role in my home network, with a file server, domain server, Exchange server, and media center PC among them. All of those tower PCs are now inside my pocket, thanks to the iPhone. I used to run a full Active Directory with individual organizational units and push out group policies to manage my family’s local PCs. I had a proxy server set up to control web access, and revoked administrator rights to ensure my family never installed malicious software. All of our email went through my Exchange server, and I had a custom app that pulled mail from ISP and Hotmail POP3 accounts and filtered it through an assortment of anti-spam tools before it was allowed to hit an Exchang