kickstarter – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Magic cards generated by neural networks

@RoboRosewater is a twitter account that posts, once a day, a Magic: The Gathering card generated by a recurrent neural network. [via Ditto ] This is an implementation of the science described by Vice’s Brian Merchant in this article . Reed Morgan Milewicz, a programmer and computer science researcher, may be the first person to teach an AI to do Magic, literally. Milewicz wowed a popular online MTG forum—as well as hacker forums like Y Combinator’s Hacker News and Reddit—when he posted the results of an experiment to “teach” a weak AI to auto-generate Magic cards. He shared a number of the bizarre “cards” his program had come up with, replete with their properly fantastical names (“Shring the Artist,” “Mided Hied Parira’s Scepter”) and freshly invented abilities (“fuseback”). Players devoured the results. Here’s the code , and here’s a simple text-only generator . Magic: The Gathering is Turing-complete .

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Magic cards generated by neural networks

The Latest Color-Changing Smart Bulb Turns Life Into a Rave

Even the light bulb, one of the earliest electrical inventions, can afford to have tweaks made. With this Kickstarter bulb , use your smartphone to switch the light’s color: anything from shades of white to Night at the Roxbury- invoking fuchsia. Imagine Hue that comes fully featured out of the box. Read more…

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The Latest Color-Changing Smart Bulb Turns Life Into a Rave

A Tiny Video Game-Playing Business Card You Can Smuggle In Your Wallet

A year ago Kevin Bates singlehandedly justified the antiquated tradition of swapping business cards with a thin and tiny handheld console that could even play video games. He originally created the Arduboy as the ultimate business card to show off his electronics skills to potential employers, but now anyone can finally buy one through Kevin’s recently-launched Kickstarter campaign. Read more…

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A Tiny Video Game-Playing Business Card You Can Smuggle In Your Wallet

With the Successful Funding of the iBox Nano, 3D Printers Just Got a Lot Smaller and Cheaper

Surely some of you remember the toy called Shrinky Dinks, the polystyrene toy that allows users to turn pieces of plastic into smaller pieces of plastic. (According to Wikipedia, 90’s alt-rockers Sugar Ray were originally known as ‘Shrinky Dinx’ until Milton Bradley threatened a lawsuit—more nostalgia than you asked for on a Tuesday morning, I know.) If it’s a somewhat dated reference, I must say that I envy the children of the future, who may well grow up with the parentally supervised fun of the 3D printing thanks to iBox Printers . The Melbourne, FL-based company’s flagship Nano model is available for pre-order for under $300 on Kickstarter . We’ve previously seen a similarly diminutive CNC machine , but the iBox is rather more impressive, considering that 3D printing adds a veritable dimension of complexity. Moreover, the portable device is quiet, lightweight and can run on batteries, all thanks to the use of ultra-efficient LCD lamps to UV-cure the resin. Made from a series of stacked acrylic plates, the housing looks something like a tissue box, with an overhead-projector-style print head; on the UI end, the Nano is controlled primarily via mobile/web app over WiFi. (more…)

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With the Successful Funding of the iBox Nano, 3D Printers Just Got a Lot Smaller and Cheaper

Sitpack and Relax on This Pocketable, Pop-Out Chair-in-a-Tube

Hot on the heel-plate-attachment-points of Noonee’s “Chairless Chair, ” the team at Mono+Mono has launched the ” Sitpack ” on Kickstarter. The Copenhagen-based design consultancy has developed what they’re calling “the world’s most compact, foldable resting device, ” and they’re looking to bring the pocketable monopod to market via a crowdfunding campaign. Designed in keeping with the seven universal design principles, the form factor looks like something made by, say, Beats, but the device itself is actually entirely mechanical: The canister splits laterally into wings (which serve as the seat), revealing a telescoping leg that extends to up to 85cm (33in). We know it’s that time of year, but don’t try this with your kid’s lightsaber toy: Originally known as “Rest”—hence the references in the video—the “Sitpack” is essentially a further reduced version of portable camp stools or those canes with a built-in tripod-stool (both of which I came across in the USPTO archive, after a commenter tipped me off about the original ‘wearable chair’ ), as they indicate in a tabulated side-by-side comparison on their Kickstarter page. They’re available for the discounted price of kr175 DKK (about $30 USD); retail will be in the kr270 DKK ($46 USD) range—not bad, considering that they’re looking to manufacture it in Denmark; see more here . Process sketches & renders The Team (more…)

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Sitpack and Relax on This Pocketable, Pop-Out Chair-in-a-Tube

Obsessed Engineer Devises The Perfect Scooper for Rock Hard Ice Cream

Ice cream is a dish best served cold, but liberating it from its carton is an exercise in bent spoons and throbbing wrists. Kickstarter’s Michael Chou spent years striving for the perfect solution, and here it is: The Midnight Scoop , shaped to engage your most powerful arm muscles in the quest for deliciousness. Read more…

The Wheelharp delivers string-orchestra sounds via a mechanical keyboard

Currently up for $50,000 in funding on Kickstarter, the Wheelharp delivers the sounds of a chamber string orchestra via a keyboard and a full chromatic set of real strings. Oh, and it’s pretty much the most striking instrument we’ve ever seen. Developed by Los Angeles-based Antiquity Music, the device reacts to a user’s press of the keys by moving a corresponding string to a rotating wheel with an edge that bows the string. The instrument gives the player plenty of controls; the right pedal controls wheel speed, while the left mans the strings’ damper system. Though an early version was demoed at NAMM this year, the Wheelharp is currently in R&D mode, and Antiquity plans to put much of the Kickstarter money toward researching the optimal string selection. Hit up the source link to hear the instrument in action. Just don’t get too excited; the instrument will retail for a cool $12,500 — or a slightly more palatable $10,000 through the crowdfunding site. Filed under: Misc , Peripherals , Alt Comments Via: Laughing Squid Source: The Wheelharp (Kickstarter)

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The Wheelharp delivers string-orchestra sounds via a mechanical keyboard

$99 Raspberry Pi-sized “supercomputer” hits Kickstarter goal

A prototype of Parallella. The final version will be the size of a credit card. Adapteva A month ago, we told you about a chipmaker called Adapteva that turned to Kickstarter in a bid to build a new platform that would be the size of a Raspberry Pi and an alternative to expensive parallel computing platforms. Adapteva needed at least $750,000 to build what it is calling “Parallella”—and it has hit the goal. Today is the Kickstarter deadline, and the project is up to more than $830,000 with a few hours to go. ( UPDATE : The fundraiser hit $898,921 when time expired.) As a result, Adapteva will build 16-core boards capable of 26 gigaflops performance, costing $99 each. The board uses RISC cores capable of speeds of 1GHz each. There is also a dual-core ARM A9-based system-on-chip, with the 16-core RISC chips acting as a coprocessor to speed up tasks. Adapteva is well short of its stretch goal of $3 million, which would have resulted in a 64-core board hitting 90 gigaflops, and built using a more expensive 28-nanometer process rather than the 65-nanometer process used for the base model. The 64-core board would have cost $199. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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$99 Raspberry Pi-sized “supercomputer” hits Kickstarter goal