#you can't even customize their appearence for starters

[ineed-to-sleep]

I wanted to say, bc I saw someone mention Geralt as an example of a predetermined character in an rpg that works, that yeah, I fully agree it can work! But in Geralt's case, for example, he's a well established character who's fully written before you start the game. He has his own traits, his flaws and shortcomings, history, relationships, etc. He's just as well written as any other character in the story, and the only things you have power over are his choices and a bit of his fighting style(sometimes his hair as well), but everything is made to fit with who this character is as established before the game even starts. Think of the origin characters in Baldur's Gate 3, it's the same thing- they're not customizable, they're established before you even start, and the only control you have is over their journey. None of these are ever meant to be a blank slate, and they're written as such.

With this Phyre character it's like they're trying so so hard to tread the line between "this is a character that stands on their own" and "this is a blank slate you can fully customize". What you end up with is a very "meh" sort of character, who's not one or the other, without enough wiggle room to make your own story however you want and not enough to get attached to them as they are. We get attached to Geralt bc he's a fully written character in the game, you just control his actions. The problem with Phyre is that they're neither a fully written character nor fully yours to write.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cleantech has an enshittification problem

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit – lots of it.

But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be some personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters. Between deliveries, accessibility, and stubbornly low-density regions, there's going to be a lot of cars, vans and trucks on the road for the foreseeable future, and these should be electric.

Beyond that irreducible minimum of personal vehicles, there's the fact that individuals can't install their own public transit system; in places that lack the political will or means to create working transit, EVs are a way for people to significantly reduce their personal emissions.

In policy circles, EV adoption is treated as a logistical and financial issue, so governments have focused on making EVs affordable and increasing the density of charging stations. As an EV owner, I can affirm that affordability and logistics were important concerns when we were shopping for a car.

But there's a third EV problem that is almost entirely off policy radar: enshittification.

An EV is a rolling computer in a fancy case with a squishy person inside of it. While this can sound scary, there are lots of cool implications for this. For example, your EV could download your local power company's tariff schedule and preferentially charge itself when the rates are lowest; they could also coordinate with the utility to reduce charging when loads are peaking. You can start them with your phone. Your repair technician can run extensive remote diagnostics on them and help you solve many problems from the road. New features can be delivered over the air.

That's just for starters, but there's so much more in the future. After all, the signal virtue of a digital computer is its flexibility. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing complete, universal, Von Neumann machine, which can run every valid program. If a feature is computationally tractable – from automated parallel parking to advanced collision prevention – it can run on a car.

The problem is that this digital flexibility presents a moral hazard to EV manufacturers. EVs are designed to make any kind of unauthorized, owner-selected modification into an IP rights violation ("IP" in this case is "any law that lets me control the conduct of my customers or competitors"):

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

EVs are also designed so that the manufacturer can unilaterally exert control over them or alter their operation. EVs – even more than conventional vehicles – are designed to be remotely killswitched in order to help manufacturers and dealers pressure people into paying their car notes on time:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Manufacturers can reach into your car and change how much of your battery you can access:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

They can lock your car and have it send its location to a repo man, then greet him by blinking its lights, honking its horn, and pulling out of its parking space:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

And of course, they can detect when you've asked independent mechanic to service your car and then punish you by degrading its functionality:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/06/26/two-of-eight-claims-in-tesla-anti-trust-lawsuit-will-move-forward/

This is "twiddling" – unilaterally and irreversibly altering the functionality of a product or service, secure in the knowledge that IP law will prevent anyone from twiddling back by restoring the gadget to a preferred configuration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

The thing is, for an EV, twiddling is the best case scenario. As bad as it is for the company that made your EV to change how it works whenever they feel like picking your pocket, that's infinitely preferable to the manufacturer going bankrupt and bricking your car.

That's what just happened to owners of Fisker EVs, cars that cost $40-70k. Cars are long-term purchases. An EV should last 12-20 years, or even longer if you pay to swap the battery pack. Fisker was founded in 2016 and shipped its first Ocean SUV in 2023. The company is now bankrupt:

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker called its vehicles "software-based cars" and they weren't kidding. Without continuous software updates and server access, those Fisker Ocean SUVs are turning into bricks. What's more, the company designed the car from the ground up to make any kind of independent service and support into a felony, by wrapping the whole thing in overlapping layers of IP. That means that no one can step in with a module that jailbreaks the Fisker and drops in an alternative firmware that will keep the fleet rolling.

This is the third EV risk – not just finance, not just charger infrastructure, but the possibility that any whizzy, cool new EV company will go bust and brick your $70k cleantech investment, irreversibly transforming your car into 5,500 lb worth of e-waste.

This confers a huge advantage onto the big automakers like VW, Kia, Ford, etc. Tesla gets a pass, too, because it achieved critical mass before people started to wise up to the risk of twiddling and bricking. If you're making a serious investment in a product you expect to use for 20 years, are you really gonna buy it from a two-year old startup with six months' capital in the bank?

The incumbency advantage here means that the big automakers won't have any reason to sink a lot of money into R&D, because they won't have to worry about hungry startups with cool new ideas eating their lunches. They can maintain the cozy cartel that has seen cars stagnate for decades, with the majority of "innovation" taking the form of shitty, extractive and ill-starred ideas like touchscreen controls and an accelerator pedal that you have to rent by the month:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

Put that way, it's clear that this isn't an EV problem, it's a cleantech problem. Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries.

And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).

I found this out the hard way during the covid lockdowns, when Solaredge terminated its 3G cellular contract and notified me that I would have to replace the modem in my system or it would stop working. This was at the height of the supply-chain crisis and there was a long waiting list for any replacement modems, with wifi cards (that used your home internet rather than a cellular connection) completely sold out for most of a year.

There are good reasons to connect rooftop solar arrays to the internet – it's not just so that Solaredge can enshittify my service. Solar arrays that coordinate with the grid can make it much easier and safer to manage a grid that was designed for centralized power production and is being retrofitted for distributed generation, one roof at a time.

But when the imperatives of extraction and efficiency go to war, extraction always wins. After all, the Solaredge system is already in place and solar installers are largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the reasons that a homeowner might want to directly control and monitor their system via local controls that don't roundtrip through the cloud.

Somewhere in the hindbrain of any prospective solar purchaser is the experience with bricked and enshittified "smart" gadgets, and the knowledge that anything they buy from a cool startup with lots of great ideas for improving production, monitoring, and/or costs poses the risk of having your 20 year investment bricked after just a few years – and, thanks to the extractive imperative, no one will be able to step in and restore your ex-solar array to good working order.

I make the majority of my living from books, which means that my pay is very "lumpy" – I get large sums when I publish a book and very little in between. For many years, I've used these payments to make big purchases, rather than financing them over long periods where I can't predict my income. We've used my book payments to put in solar, then an induction stove, then a battery. We used one to buy out the lease on our EV. And just a month ago, we used the money from my upcoming Enshittification book to put in a heat pump (with enough left over to pay for a pair of long-overdue cataract surgeries, scheduled for the fall).

When we started shopping for heat pumps, it was clear that this was a very exciting sector. First of all, heat pumps are kind of magic, so efficient and effective it's almost surreal. But beyond the basic tech – which has been around since the late 1940s – there is a vast ferment of cool digital features coming from exciting and innovative startups.

By nature, I'm the kid of person who likes these digital features. I started out as a computer programmer, and while I haven't written production code since the previous millennium, I've been in and around the tech industry for my whole adult life. But when it came time to buy a heat-pump – an investment that I expected to last for 20 years or more – there was no way I was going to buy one of these cool new digitally enhanced pumps, no matter how much the reviewers loved them. Sure, they'd work well, but it's precisely because I'm so knowledgeable about high tech that I could see that they would fail very, very badly.

You may think EVs are bullshit, and they are – though there will always be room for some personal vehicles, and it's better for people in transit deserts to drive EVs than gas-guzzlers. You may think rooftop solar is a dead-end and be all-in on utility scale solar (I think we need both, especially given the grid-disrupting extreme climate events on our horizon). But there's still a wide range of cleantech – induction tops, heat pumps, smart thermostats – that are capital intensive, have a long duty cycle, and have good reasons to be digitized and networked.

Take home storage batteries: your utility can push its rate card to your battery every time they change their prices, and your battery can use that information to decide when to let your house tap into the grid, and when to switch over to powering your home with the solar you've stored up during the day. This is a very old and proven pattern in tech: the old Fidonet BBS network used a version of this, with each BBS timing its calls to other nodes to coincide with the cheapest long-distance rates, so that messages for distant systems could be passed on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

Cleantech is a very dynamic sector, even if its triumphs are largely unheralded. There's a quiet revolution underway in generation, storage and transmission of renewable power, and a complimentary revolution in power-consumption in vehicles and homes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

But cleantech is too important to leave to the incumbents, who are addicted to enshittification and planned obsolescence. These giant, financialized firms lack the discipline and culture to make products that have the features – and cost savings – to make them appealing to the very wide range of buyers who must transition as soon as possible, for the sake of the very planet.

It's not enough for our policymakers to focus on financing and infrastructure barriers to cleantech adoption. We also need a policy-level response to enshittification.

Ideally, every cleantech device would be designed so that it was impossible to enshittify – which would also make it impossible to brick:

Based on free software (best), or with source code escrowed with a trustee who must release the code if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

All patents in a royalty-free patent-pool (best); or in a trust that will release them into a royalty-free pool if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

No parts-pairing or other DRM permitted (best); or with parts-pairing utilities available to all parties on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best);

All diagnostic and error codes in the public domain, with all codes in the clear within the device (best); or with decoding utilities available on demand to all comers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best).

There's an obvious business objection to this: it will reduce investment in innovative cleantech because investors will perceive these restrictions as limits on the expected profits of their portfolio companies. It's true: these measures are designed to prevent rent-extraction and other enshittificatory practices by cleantech companies, and to the extent that investors are counting on enshittification rents, this might prevent them from investing.

But that has to be balanced against the way that a general prohibition on enshittificatory practices will inspire consumer confidence in innovative and novel cleantech products, because buyers will know that their investments will be protected over the whole expected lifespan of the product, even if the startup goes bust (nearly every startup goes bust). These measures mean that a company with a cool product will have a much larger customer-base to sell to. Those additional sales more than offset the loss of expected revenue from cheating and screwing your customers by twiddling them to death.

There's also an obvious legal objection to this: creating these policies will require a huge amount of action from Congress and the executive branch, a whole whack of new rules and laws to make them happen, and each will attract court-challenges.

That's also true, though it shouldn't stop us from trying to get legal reforms. As a matter of public policy, it's terrible and fucked up that companies can enshittify the things we buy and leave us with no remedy.

However, we don't have to wait for legal reform to make this work. We can take a shortcut with procurement – the things governments buy with public money. The feds, the states and localities buy a lot of cleantech: for public facilities, for public housing, for public use. Prudent public policy dictates that governments should refuse to buy any tech unless it is designed to be enshittification-resistant.

This is an old and honorable tradition in policymaking. Lincoln insisted that the rifles he bought for the Union Army come with interoperable tooling and ammo, for obvious reasons. No one wants to be the Commander in Chief who shows up on the battlefield and says, "Sorry, boys, war's postponed, our sole supplier decided to stop making ammunition."

By creating a market for enshittification-proof cleantech, governments can ensure that the public always has the option of buying an EV that can't be bricked even if the maker goes bust, a heat-pump whose digital features can be replaced or maintained by a third party of your choosing, a solar controller that coordinates with the grid in ways that serve their owners – not the manufacturers' shareholders.

We're going to have to change a lot to survive the coming years. Sure, there's a lot of scary ways that things can go wrong, but there's plenty about our world that should change, and plenty of ways those changes could be for the better. It's not enough for policymakers to focus on ensuring that we can afford to buy whatever badly thought-through, extractive tech the biggest companies want to foist on us – we also need a focus on making cleantech fit for purpose, truly smart, reliable and resilient.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Image: 臺灣古寫真上色 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raid_on_Kagi_City_1945.jpg

Grendelkhan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_mounted_solar_panels.gk.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[thydungeongal]

When you talk about games like Odnd 'not balancing encounters' - could you elaborate more on what you mean by balancing? I've seen you mention that not all encounters were meant to be won by the players but to me that doesn't preclude balance. For example even if the players might not win a fight, choosing to not give a room enemies that can trap and insta kill players is still 'balancing'. You're just balancing for 'they may very well need to just run from the fight' rather than strictly 'they will win this fight and expend somewhere in the range of X and Y% of their resources'

I mean old D&D very rarely balanced for either to be fair. Played as written it was entirely possible to run into a room full of instant death bees that theoretically could one-shot a player character.

But what I mean generally speaking when I talk about this difference between older and newer editions is that older editions of D&D don't take party level or party size into account when generating content. Whether you've got a party of four level 1 characters or a party of twelve characters of levels 5-10 your characters might still end up running into 40-400 goblins in the wilderness.

Meanwhile D&Ds 3e to 5e all ask you to take character level and party size into account when generating content for the game. This isn't inherently bad in my opinion, but it represents a shift in playstyle.

Of course in practice what the old D&D approach often means is that starter level characters stick to starter level dungeons until they can take on higher level threats, but even those starter level dungeons are less concerned with the idea of presenting a fair and balanced challenge for the characters that players can expect them to be able to overcome and more just. Random generative bullshit. And players can't ever go in expecting to have a fighting chance against everything. Those instant death bees appear 1d6 at a time in dungeons, 5d6 in their lair.

But yeah the game is kind of balanced with regard to the idea that characters don't ever really need to engage unless they choose to or unless they get unlucky. Whereas modern D&D often builds a bunch of safety nets into combat (not dying immediately at 0 hp, more hit points per character, ready access to healing, etc.) older editions build that balance through having procedures for detecting encounters beforehand, and even if that fails combat isn't always necessary (catching monsters by surprise means automatically being able to evade them, running away is always an option, sometimes the monsters simply don't react with hostility). I guess it's a certain kind of balance, but it's a very different kind of balance from what I mean when I say "balanced encounters," which I broadly use to refer to encounters that are custom built to take into account party size and level with the assumption that under normal circumstances the party should emerge victorious.

[finnlongman]

While trying to share links to my Old Irish Memrise courses with somebody today, I discovered that they're no longer accessible via the main Memrise website at all. This means that any of my previous posts linking to them (or any by others) have dead links and you can't find them at all.

However, when I contacted their Customer Support team for help, I received an automated email directing me to a separate "community courses" website, where they appear to be intact. So, here are the working links:

Old Irish Glossary: Quin's Old Irish Workbook, Lessons 1-20

Old Irish Glossary: Quin's Old Irish Workbook, Lessons 20-40

Vocab from Immram Curaig ua Corra

Vocab from Longes mac nUislenn

Vocab from How Cú Chulainn Got His Name

I did not make the last two of these, but I made the first three when I was an undergrad. They're not the best-constructed courses in the world; they lack grammatical information about most words, for starters. But I still credit them with being the reason I passed my undergrad Old Irish exams, and maybe they'll be useful to others working their way through Quin or trying to learn some basic vocab.

I don't know how long Memrise intends to maintain this separate Community Courses website. I hope forever; it'll be a bummer if it goes completely. I don't think they can be accessed via the Memrise app though (unless you're already enrolled in them; possibly not even then?), so it's likely to be a purely desktop experience.

[liu-anhuaming]

Reading Chinese Ebooks on 讀墨 ReadMoo

For the past few years, I've labored under the assumption that I can't read Chinese ebooks because I just can't focus on them. However, I recently saw someone on insta mention the app 讀墨. I was intrigued, and decided to give it a try. And wow, what a shock, I can in fact read Chinese ebooks! I just have to change it to vertical text and make the font very large.

So the past couple weeks I've been trying to read more consistently using 讀墨. The book I started with was slow going at first, which almost made me give up; it was the Chinese translation of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This book really wasn't for me, and I didn't want to keep reading it. So instead of just giving up, I bought one more book and tried again: 《你的孩子不是你的孩子》 by 吳曉樂 (yes, it is the basis for the Netflix show of the same name).

I devoured the book in under a week. So yeah, I think Chinese ebooks work for me if I like the book.

Below is gonna be an overview of the app, and my thoughts on it so far. It's not comprehensive though, since there's a lot of things on this app I haven't explored yet (like the audiobooks).

***Please note that 讀墨 is a Taiwanese app, and as such it mainly offers books written in traditional characters. There are apparently books written in simplified available, but I haven't explored those since I'm fine reading traditional.***

Buying Books

Buying books is fairly simple. You make an in-app purchase of coins, which you then use to buy books. Note: As of writing this, I have recently recently received a notification from the app that their book purchasing system will be changing soon. Instead of being able to buy the books in the app, you'll have to log in to your account in a browser and buy the books there. The books will apparently then appear on the app for you to read.

As it stands, 210 coins costs $10.99, and the books I've bought have ranged in price from 210 to about 300 coins. That means the books cost ~$11-$16, just like a regular book. This could be pricey, but since I'd otherwise be paying for international shipping if I were buying a physical copy, this feels like a bargain to me. (For me, shipping books from Taiwan/China to the US typically doubles the price of the purchase rip)

Once you buy the book, it's in your library for you to start whenever you please.

As for browsing for books, I haven't gone too in-depth yet. I went in to 讀墨 with a TBR and went for books off that list exclusively. When it comes to buying books online, I almost always go on whatever site I'm buying from with a list of the books I'm thinking of buying. I get recommendations elsewhere (e.g., Goodreads or insta).

Reading Books

The 讀墨 reading interface is pretty typical for an e-reader app. What makes me like it way better than other apps I've used is that it has a lot more customization options.

For starters, you've got 6 options for page/text color. There's the typical black, white, and sepia, but there's also blue and green! I use the 奶綠 option, since I don't like having such a stark contrast between the text and the background when reading on my phone for long periods.

Then there's the options for changing the text size and spacing. You can make it bigger or smaller as you please, and put more or less space between each line of text.

You can also change the font. There's 8 different fonts you can choose from, including the default. There's even a font that puts 注音 next to each character! You can see a preview of that one in the photo below.

And then, there's the option to switch between horizontal and vertical text. The default is horizontal text, but I've come to prefer vertical when reading Chinese novels. If you go to your settings on your profile, you can make vertical text your default, which is what I ended up doing.

Like any good e-reader, there's options to highlight text. There's four different colors you can use (pink, yellow, purple, and blue). If you go the ToC, you can find all of your highlights and filter by color of highlight. Super convenient, since I've been using pink to highlight words/phrases I don't know or find interesting and yellow to highlight key sentences/paragraphs.

Aside from highlighting, when you select text you have the option to look the characters up in a dictionary or online. I've been getting a lot of errors with this recently, but I'm wondering if that's just my phone acting weird? It worked perfectly fine when I first started using the app. Anyways, the dictionary it takes you to is 夢典 MoeDict and it opens in a browser. This personally is a bit annoying bc I actually have this dictionary app installed on my phone, but this is a minor complaint. The dictionary opening in a new browser tab is a non-issue.

Reading Stats

Now, I'm a big dork and love to track my reading stats. To my great satisfaction, 讀墨 keeps track of some stats. The main one is time spent reading. You can set a daily goal (the minimum is 20 minutes), and if you reach it you get a nice checkmark on the calendar. The calendar doesn't update until the very end of each day, so if you've reached your goal for the day it won't show on the calendar until the next day.

Also, keep in mind time differences between where you live and Taiwan. I'm ~12 hours behind Taiwan, so the app doesn't start a new day until around noon for me.

Below the calendar, there's a chart that shows your total reading times for a week, month, or year. I normally can't be bothered to time my reading (especially not when I'm reading physical books) so this is cool to see. I think when it comes to reading in Chinese, being timed is more interesting because I'm able to more clearly gauge progress.

And below all that, there's a breakdown of the genres you read. I don't pay much attention to genre when choosing books, so I don't find this one quite as interesting.

(tfw you're reading a non-fiction book about a tutor so your main genre becomes 教育)

Overall Thoughts

So yeah, I've enjoyed myself so far. Aside from the reading interface, I find the app pretty easy to navigate. I spent a bit of time just clicking around and was able to figure out what's what pretty quick.

Like I said, this isn't a comprehensive review, but I'd recommend giving the app a try if you're willing/able to put down money for ebooks and are able to read traditional. It feels worth the money for me, since the interface is pretty customizable and easy to use.

If you're wondering where to find simplified ebooks, idk. This is my first real foray into Chinese ebooks, so I don't really know where to find them for simplified or traditional. I have heard that it is a little easier to pirate Chinese ebooks since their copyright laws are a little different than ours in the US?

[kanto-jhoto]

So out of curiosity I played a little bit of "Pokemon Crystal Clear" today... I don't normally emulate pokemon games since it makes it feel less personal and you can't use your pokemon in things like pokemon stadium and such. But when I was looking for info on game boy romhacks, this kept getting mentioned as one of the best.

I am very intrigued. Very customizable, it has a lot of features I really want in the main series as well... namely the ability to choose from more than just three starters, follower pokemon, the ability to customize your battle music to be music from other regions, and the pokedex is insanely detailed compared to the games. I'm pretty blown away and haven't even strayed far from my starting town yet.

I'd be half tempted to buy a repro cart of this, especially since this is said to be compatible with Pokemon Stadium 2, and therefore you actually CAN transfer your pokemon out of the game... but the problem is that this appears to be a project that is constantly being updated, so you'd have to buy a new repro every time you wanted to play with new features unless you have the means to reflash a gameboy cartridge, and I don't have the money or equipment for that.

But yeah, you should look into this one guys. Could be the best 8-bit pokemon game ever... That being said, I am not going to play this one for a long time... I paid a lot of money for my copies of G/S/C, I feel guilty for spending so much, so if I don't even finish a run of those games, then i'll feel like it really was a waste. So if I play gen 2 again, it's gonna be the real thing. And I might even get to it soon, trying out Crystal Clear has me itching or some pokemon. And I still gotta get that Eevee to complete my living dex for gen 1. I'd like to do a gen 2 living dex as well... BUT, when I get finished with those then i'll definitely add Crystal Clear to my queue. And I'm gonna follow the project a little closely so I can keep tabs on a possible "final version" so I can consider getting a repro some day.

[hateshirt]

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[reilliane]

Intertwined ✤ Venti

I n t e r t w i n e d

A/N: Even though I already have Venti, I still did his trial run lolol ashdjdhkahda good luck on your pulls, lovelies! ✤ SAGAU Concept: Characters are aware that they are codes, pixels, and are sentient in the player's gaming platform. When the player is offline, their programming is turned off and they gain free will. ✤ [P/Name] = Player name ✤ she/her Words: 650

「 Venti please come home again, my teapot is way better than Angel's Share- I have a whole bar decorated for you in that one realm 」

「 My bartending skills are amazing, I got classes from Charles! 」

As if he doesn't already know that.

[P/Name], in control of Aether, has attained the highest possible points in the event 'Drink A-Dreaming'.

Venti wished for nothing more but to break past the shackles of his programming and appear as one of the customers, but he can't risk deletion.

So all that he can do is watch until it is time for his banner to arrive.

It's been so long.

The last time he has freely interacted with [P/Name] the most was during 1.4's Windblume. But now—now he has a chance.

Just please—let [P/Name] win her 50/50.

“This must be what that old buffoon felt,”

Venti chortles, though it lacks the supposed optimism. He successfully beat the risks, didn't he?

Oh, he can only hope for this wish to be the same. He has waited so long.. so long.. ever since the launch of the game.

He's her first five star.

Not once has [P/Name] discarded him or anything, but there is something special.. in feeling the attention on him as if he's her center. It feels like he's gone back the clock.

When it only used to be him, with the starter characters and the Traveler. He does not have anything against the newer characters, of course—but the past is special.

Any moment, he corrects himself, is special.

Venti jolts when he feels a tap on his shoulder, followed by a short giggle.

“It is time,” Yunjin points towards the moving cursor.

Watching it makes the archon swallow and clasp his clammy palms, knowing the pity count to be around seventy-six. Anytime now, and..

“Just believe a little!” beams Xiangling as she gets enveloped with a pretty violet glow, indicating her summoning, “The gacha is rather merciful this time!”

He doesn't doubt that. Sucrose has just been summoned a while ago, and now before he knows it—he is all alone... aside from the clutter of three-starred weapons in the abyss.

Venti places his hand against the digital cover of his banner, parallel to the golden cursor that's paused against the wish button.

I want to feel it again, he closes his eyes. Your happiness.

If only there is a way to reach past the screen and tell their player how thankful they are for each time being put into their arsenal—certainly, they all would've done it already.

The teapot function has thankfully given them enough luxury to personally talk to the 'Traveler', but it isn't enough.

“[P/Name],” he murmurs, feeling his body growing light, “Bring me home again.”

The sight of gold almost sends you toppling to the floor and you grasp the armrests of your chair, unprepared to see who or what has blessed your wishes.

Your youtube audience is beaming in the chat, both nervous and excited, chanting the name of the windborne bard as if it'll be able to reel him in for the second time.

Nibbling down on your lower lip, you click away at the three stars and a copy of a sacrificial sword, counting down with each passing item. For another time, you click—and a bloom of aureate light glues you in place.

And then you're squealing.

“Ahhh! He really came! Chat, he's here! For the second time!”

As the chat rejoices with you in your little bubble of happiness, you enter the character screen to activate the newly acquired constellation, your voice growing louder afterward.

You glance over his crowned talents before pausing to take a moment to enlighten your audience with contagious excitement. To this, you fail to see the nuanced detail of Venti's features.

He's grinning—the sight appearing as if he can see through the monitor itself.

Ah, he's home again.

intertwined

a/n: venti is such a lovely character to play, may everyone who wishes for him be able to get him!!

@cherryflushz @e7t3 @scarlet-halos @lordbugs @nebulaera @annoying-and-upset @hanniejji @applepi1415 @tjjjrsj @azirajane @hey-comrade-hold-stil @limelightsuperhero @chloeloe @loptido @windyventi @nejibot @ganyuqrt @justrinnn @aryllechan @epioneemersyn

[ransprang]

Hello! I read about your Valentines post!

(By the I love your guys work and is so amazed by the amount of work you do for the community !)

Character of choice ; Viktor or Jayce from Arcane.

Pronouns - Any but preferably He/They

Personality traits - (For a starter I'm an INFP) I'm quite introverted, Creative, and caring

Physical traits - I'm 5'5/5'6, a bit on the chubby side physically and I have curly brown hair!

Favorite trope - Soulmates, anything involving something that happens when you meet them really, but if it's something more simple then coffee / Flower shop! Where you meet them there by working at the place. :]

Ideal date is somewhere in the forest, a picnic or even a cute date in a small cafe, nothing over the top or even an aquarium!

My love language is gifting and touch.

Thank you !

aww thanks we're glad you like our writing <3 have a good valentine's day x

Valentine's Forest Date with Viktor

600 followers event

Soulmate AU: A touch from your soulmate will leave an imprint there (like a different colored area on your skin, or a symbol, or name)

In your world, to find your soulmate is quite tricky. You can't randomly go up to people and just touch them (unless you're okay with jail time). So you decided to find a sneaky way to do so. You decided to be a barista at a coffee shop! Everytime you serve coffee over the counter you try to subtly brush a finger against the customer's hand.

One day a tired looking man with a cane and disheveled brown hair walks in through the door of your shop. "Welcome! What can I get you sir?", you chirped. The man made his way to the counter and put some cash down, "Give me your strongest drink please. Take away". You entered in his order and handed him his change, "And your name is..." "It's Viktor." 'Ah that explains the Russian accent' you noted.

You make his drink and scribble his name onto the cup. Now as usual you're ready to brush your fingers on his hand by accident. You steadily hand the cup of coffee to Viktor and your point finger brushed against his pinky. Suddenly a small streak of pink appears on both your fingers!

"V-Viktor I think you're my soulmate", you say blushing with wide eyes. "Vhat are you talki-", he follows your eyes and sees the foreign streak on his pinky. Both of you are startled for a few seconds not sure what to say. Glancing at your name tag he breaks the silence, "y/n, right? Well Valentine's day is coming up soon let's get to know each other perhaps?" Nodding your head you both exchange contact details.

You proposed going to the forest for the first date. You thought Viktor would enjoy being in nature and you loved the peace and quiet.

You were strolling through the woods at a leisurely pace, with Viktor limping beside you. Suddenly you heard a rustle in the branches. You snapped your head and even Viktor looked startled by your reaction.

You saw yellowish-brown fur peeking from the bushes and realized it was probably a bear. There had been sightings here before but none of them ever bothered you. You remembered that if you see a brown bear you’re supposed to play dead.

“Quick Vik, play dead,” you whispered to him. You looked to your side to find Viktor already passed out in fear on the ground beside you. Now even if you wanted to, you couldn’t run away. 

You slowly sank to the ground as the rustling grew stronger till the small head of a tiny, furry creature appeared. “Good evening chaps. I’m just here to check up on my good assistant Vik- Oh dear,” the fluff ball remarked upon seeing Viktor on the ground. He strutted over to give Viktor a few tight slaps rousing him to wakefulness. “I’m Heimerdinger by the way, sorry for ruining your date. Viktor I’ll see you later.” With that the creature disappeared into the woods. 

Both you and Viktor were shook by the events and so decided the spend the rest of the date in the aquarium. Wild fishes were better than wild animals.

yours soulfully,

admins sar & san

[herotome]

hello! i was wondering if you were going to add the ability to change your pronouns and/or have less feminine pics for MC? i personally use they/them pronouns and like to play games where i can use them even if i do not put myself into the game... thank you for your time!

In regards to the MC's appearance: 

Yes, I do want to include more customization options in the future, though you may be disappointed to hear that I plan on making this a paid feature. I’m interested in making it a crowdfunding reward tier, where backers can design their own MC to appear in that little resume profile picture box.

Masculine-presenting MCs are more than welcome. While I can't predict what profile pictures people will submit (or if people would even be willing to pay for that kind of thing), I will always encourage people to headcanon their MCs however they like.

In regards to changing pronouns:

important update from 2023: Haha... how the turn tables. How should I say this? I’ve come around. “Daisy’s changed her mind,” so to speak.

You can now choose your pronouns in Herotome. The protagonist is still intended to be a woman (and can be cis OR trans, as I always intended), but pronouns can be swapped between he/she/they, and even changed on the fly after a certain point in the game, so you can rp as genderfluid!

I was not pressured into this decision, I just took a long long time to reflect and really think. I've tested it extensively and it feels right.

Mainly, I had to internalize that gender =/= pronouns. He/him lesbians exist, I use they/them myself, and there are all sorts of beautiful gender identities out there!! I've just seen gender paired with pronouns so often in games; when the player decides on one, they are automatically deciding on the other...

It was freeing when I understood that it doesn't have to be that way. I don't have to make my game that way.

My thoughts from 2021 are persevered below, with certain areas crossed out. I don't want to hide or delete my statement from back then even though it's far from perfect, and I think it's important to showcase how thoughts and feelings can change over time.

Thank you for your patience understanding!!

----

I once replied to an ask about pronoun customization a long time ago, but I have been feeling a need to update my response. My previous statement was people pleasing and overly cordial. I was terrified of disapproval, of disappointment, and of rejection. I hated the idea that someone would be turned off by the game just because the protagonist is a woman. I knew there was a high demand for customizations of all kinds, and the very idea of going against what people want has caused me... still causes me a lot of grief. It's taken effort to try to let go of this haunting need for approval. I've increasingly begun to feel that my previous statement sends the wrong message, and that by hiding my shifting feelings on the subject I am bordering on dishonesty. As such, here is my updated response: 

No, I will not be adding pronoun options to Herotome.  If Herotome is no longer a game that interests you due to lacking this option: I understand completely.

I enjoy many IFs and VNs that do feature pronoun options, and surely you will enjoy them as well. I can recommend the highly beloved Perfumare and The Passenger, for starters. You may also enjoy The Remainder and Hybrid, which feature canon non-binary protagonists.

I'm sorry if I’ve disappointed any of you by being ambiguous or by refusing to answer asks about on the topic of pronoun customization - this was selfish on my part.

... But I would like to elaborate more on this subject, if you'll allow me, because there is a disturbingly common misconception that adding pronouns to a game is as easy as flicking a switch.

(There should be a “Read More” link under here. Of there isn’t please just click on the post itself to view it in full).

In code, yes, you could say it works like a light switch. On-off. He-she-they. 

Now. I would like to direct your attention to the network of wires connected to the light switch, which run beneath the walls and connect to various light sources throughout my house. The wires represent grammar, the protagonist’s POV, artwork depicting the protagonist, and how the protagonist is perceived by other characters. The lights represent every single instance the protagonist’s gender is referenced to in-game.

(Yes there are way too many lights in my house, it's a weird horror party house - bear with me.) In writing an interactive game designed for immersion, I have wired the game a certain way: the protagonist is perceived as a young woman throughout the game, going by "she/her." So in our silly metaphor the lights are... let's say they're green lights. Were I to add a pronoun-switching light switch, with the goal of giving my players the freedom to chance their pronoun lights whenever and however they please, I will have to: A) Write for ALL the perspectives: 

...by gutting the walls to add additional sets of wires, so the lights in my house can be flipped to various different colors - he-she-they - purple-green-gold. 

But that’s not all. We have to ensure every single wire is affixed to the CORRECT lights because otherwise you’ll have this one flickering green light while the rest of the house is gold, and people are going to send me messages asking what's wrong with my house lights, it's rather disturbing to have one random green light flashing at them when they'd definitely flipped the switch to gold. 

The lights are so much fun and deeply engaging, but require careful supervision and frequent maintenance. It’s an enormous amount of work, and frankly every dev who undertakes it deserves all the patience and understanding in the world.  B) Write in a gender neutral way:

... by gutting the walls to rip out the wires entirely, throwing all mentions of being a woman directly into the trash. Replace the wires with gray ones and turn some of the lights permanently off. The pronouns can change, but much of the language concerning the MC will become vague. Muted. Palatable. No colors.  Designed to please everyone and offend no one. You flip the switch, some lights turn on... and there's no longer that wash of color that makes the lights feel personal and catered to you and how you present yourself. 

But hey, if you're playing as an android or a space alien or if you're on a fantastic magic adventure where gender roles are totally irrelevant -- who even needs colorful lights? The gender neutral way can work, has worked, and a lot of people (including me) do enjoy them. However, I do think that if all games were written this way, we would lose out on a lot of varied perspectives, and that’s not what we should strive for.

Many devs plan their game around the wires from the beginning - whether the lights are gray, or many colors, or just one color. 

I planned for Herotome to be one color. It's a shade of red that is quite personal to me, because I want to try and show people how incredibly beautiful and interesting this shade of red can be, amid an industry populated with cheaply made, mass produced, poorly-translated-blank-slate-primary-color-protagonist-red. (DOUBLE, TRIPLE EMPHASIS on "industry" and "mass produced," y'all better not think I'm throwing shade at my fellow indies when I'm throwing it at soulless mobile and mainstream games LOL)

I truly did consider gutting the walls to add pronoun options at one point. I’ve considered it at multiple points. I second guess my decision and I stress and I spiral, but the more I develop the game, the less feasible the idea becomes and the more it breaks my heart.  ... So there you have it. There's my pronoun light switch manifesto. I’ve been putting it off and holding it in and as a result it's been boiling over for a longggg time. 

Sorry again if this is disappointing news for some of you. I need to accept that I can't make everyone happy, and not everyone is going to enjoy the game. But it's going to be okay. ❤︎  Either way, I’ll catch y’all on the flip flop.

Much love,

Wudge

[silvermuffins]

Pokemon Legends Arceus: because i sold my soul to nintendo long ago

Truth be told I preordered this game the moment it was available and downloaded it ASAP. And then proceeded to not touch it. ADHD brain. Lack of time in between other things. Part of me screaming that I should finish a game before starting another. The stars weren't right. Couldn't do it. Stars, man. Stars.

But today my lifelong love has returned to me, and today we fight to the death!

i haven't even opened the game yet ftr. but i HAVE closed the one i'd been playing, so i'm ready to go.

leeeet's do this

shiny light and i expect to hear "open your eyes...wake up, Link!"

oh shit, beyond both time and space, gold, is this the collective unconscious

hello god its me margaret

i do not know how much of my appearance i'll be able to change later....as for name. hm. i picked a very unjapanese look, but i do want a japanese name... [much working ont hat later] Eiko

wait this is a fucking isekai?

like god is telling me a world in which pokemon is gonna be strange to me

yooooo EIKO ISN'T FROM POKEMON WORLD

maybe i shouldn't have gone with a japanese name lol too late now

yo it's straight up GOD telling me to catch 'em all this time

YEET

oh fuck there goes my phone

this is now a kingdom hearts opening sequence

awww god took my-- okay dude PLEASE tell me you didn't download any sketchy apps i JUST got this phone

rude

what is that thumping

i FELL OUT OF THE SKY

strange hat man thinks I'M the weird one for falling out of the sky

which tbf i probably am

also tf is that thundery swirly thing in the sky over there are we just gonna fucking ignore that?!

if im not from the pokemon world why does my teeshirt have a luxury ball on it

"a bit of a pickle"

"a bit"

NO SHIT DUDE

i just told you i don't have an acquaintance around here why would you think i have somewhere to stay

NO I AM NOT SURE I WILL SURVIVE

holy shit my guy my dude

expressive protag tho, very nice, that was a very clear look of oh fuck im screwed

the starters just patiently waiting to be acknowledged

"almost as if they knew" yup okay then they knew and there's some destiny bullshit going on

i mean i guess i WAS literally sent by god

siiiigh I know what a pokemon is but Eiko has to get the tutorial

im amazed strange hat man even considered i might not know

currently stalling while i try to pick a starter

Laventon.....okay so the locals don't necessarily have Japanese names we all good

off the starters go again which tbh im surprised they didn't sooner

cant jump cant swim

oh arceus marks my targets ig?

no it's just GIVING MY GODDAMN PHONE BACK

oh sick custom case

god is texting me

this is gonna be the coolest catching tutorial ever

also we're not gonna do a nickname theme it's gonna just be whatever

also thank you game freak for giving cyndaquil its fire back

.....sooooo so far im getting professor useless vibes from laventon, can't wait to ditch him. i got my mission from god, don't need you.

whoa holy shit fifty?

laventon's design is SO weird like what is he even doing

so pokemon can shrink themselves???? ALL of them can? so why can't everything use minimize

....is laventon british? or galarian????? because his speech patterns....

booped oshawott riiight in the snoot

excuse you sir who are you calling old girl

acting awfully avuncular for a dude i met two seconds ago

bla bla pokedex sir i have my mission

BUT THOU MUST rowan's way of but thou musting was vastly superior

he's finally doing something helpful to the kid who just got isekai'd

oh we are FINALLY acknowledging the ominous cloud over the mountain

them's some sideburns

the villagers are, appropriately, confused and curious and gossipy

god has bequeathed me a gps

prelude beach, that's kinda on the nose

as a true jrpg player i am running around talking to everyone before i get on with shit

oh jesus nearly every building seems to be able to be go-inside-able

village guardian shrine has an arceus ring in it....

okay can't enter any buildings yet

my guy's mustache is green but his beard is grey

holy fuck hi lucas

laventon is a foreigner confirmed!

"yeah he's professor useless hang with the cool kids instead"

ooook lucas's name is Rei

somehow laaventon snuck up on him though...

Cyllene. who gave her the right to be so this,

holy shit i have an age

EVERYONE here is sus of me wow

THIS is how we're explining the [POINTS AT OMINOUSLY THUNDERING SWIRLY THING]

just casually discussing space-time rifts over dinner like it's nbd?!

also is it me or are lots of people kinda looking down on the Survey Corps

awww cyllene is a stress eater

we got new villagers out and some relocated bc it's later! and whoa shit nice room

why are there jars of rocks in my room

get this show on the road

thats probably fine

there's so many foreigners here??? so why am i an issue

"almighty Sinnoh" what the fuck

there's actually a shitton of people here

okay i'm ready to Continue

holy shit cyllene your desk

what guidance did i just activate???

also she really is just gonna yeet me out in the wild huh

thankfully laventon is PROBABLY going to "it's dangerous to go alone! take this"

we goin' Cyndaquil!

hang on time for more exploring

who dat

oh shit dude YOU should be the professor

you could call the pokedex....volo's guide to monsters

oh snap we gonna fight

unsure if stranger danger?

eh it's probably okay he seems sparkly

holy shit that battle music is so hype

whoa potions do a LOT

awww this trial is cute

all done. can't wait to be out of the tutorial zone and just be free

explorin'. when can i trust npcs won't say new things?

i sorta like how people are a little meaner than most pokemon games

finally, clean clothes! and, hat get! am now true protag

i completely missed the second floor when i was exploring here earlier...didn't even occur i might be able to go up the other staircase

hello rowan senior,oh fuck dude wants to fight

oh my fuckign god

etjkrtyfnretr

i love this man

let's just get on with things instead of hunting down every scrp of unique diaalogue

this research system already looks SO cool

im gona dress up CUTE

wastes money to change hair just to preview hats then change back bc i didn't like any of 'em

the photo place is interesting

okay! field time!

i don't have a shitton to say right now im just kicking around having fun

rei can you pls just leave me to do my thing, my exploring is very quickly proving to be more efficient than your handholding

i keep trying to use botw controls

he checks on me, has me check if i have tasks to report. there are 41. got a shitton of points for that. caan i cross the bridge yet?

time to go get a star

Diamond Clan.....hmmm

awww him have pika

oh sweetheart you are NOT gonna win

i want this lady to carry me

and then we took a break for food!

[several hours later]

ooh i get mystery gifts now!

volo still Being

i must go my people need me we are leaving it here for now

[avernale]

Have You Seen These New Pokémon? Have you SEEN Them?

New trailer for Scarlet and Violet finally dropped. I was getting so itchy for new information, I was about to try and start making stuff up!

I still might.

Website has also updated. I had problems accessing it, but it turned out to be my VPN.

Trailer and commentary in the Keep Reading link

First notable thing about the trailer are the Pokémon stickers on the wall I didn't notice before. Not much to say, just wanted to point them out.

Second is the new Pokémon Center, which is now... a gas station? I mean, that's what first comes to mind when I see it, but it's actually more of a kiosk now than an entire building. I'm willing to bet this is just how they are in The Wilderness, since I'm pretty sure there were traditional Pokémon Center buildings in the previous trailer. This is probably so they don't need to have NPC's in The Out Of Doors perform this function (though they still could if they wanted). It's probably also a PokéMart, PC, and other functions.

There appear to be two academies. Judging from the starting outfit thing, which you belong to probably depends on version. I get the impression only one will exist per game, but not necessarily.

There are also two professors in this game, but it's also one per version! Tron-reject Turo (short for Arturo, probably, but likely Turbo also. This may be more apparent later) in Violet and Unfrozen Cavewoman Professor Sada (seriously, what is she wearing?) in Scarlet. Also of note, the change in character art style indeed goes beyond the player character.

After new footage of the starters (with more info on the website), we're introduced to Nemona. Judging from what she says, you meet her before you pick your first Pokémon. The website describes her as a guide rather than a rival, and I'm getting a "Sempai" vibe here. She probably goes to the same school as you as an upperclassman, which is a fairly literal translation of the word though I think it implies a sort of casual mentorship as well.

I also notice some asymmetry in her design with that single, elbow length glove. I'm betting either it or at least the bracelet part is the new Gimmick Band, like the Z-Ring in Sun & Moon or the Dynamax Band in Sword & Shield. You won't see it on the player character in either trailer, but they've left the Gimmick Bands out before properly introducing them in past generations.

Nemona also introduces us to Pawmi, which is probably the worst Pikachu derivation I've seen. It didn't even read as one until I saw it was an Electric type on the website. I see it now, of course, but this thing doesn't even have a nose! This looks like someone tried to reverse-engineer Pikachu for their own game and avoid copyright infringement as much as possible. I mean, you could say that about all the Pikachu derivations, but... What even is it? A red panda? A chinchilla? A chipmunk? It's almost shapeless.

Also, in-world multiplayer is back, but now it's less of pseudo-MMO free-for-all. You can link up with up to four friends and... go your separate ways? I mean, sure, I guess. I'm not sure if that's meant to be a selling point or just a framing device for the rest of the trailer. Also, it looks like trainer customization is back. Yay! I didn't really doubt it but I thought it seemed possible with the version-exclusive starting outfits.

After a couple more returning Pokémon (Fletchinder and Flaafy), we're introduced to Smoliv. Love the name, hate the design. It's like a knock-off Petilil, but I'll give it a pass for now since it's probably going to have an evolution that looks more interesting. It apparently produces oil that's not fit for human consumption, but I imagine Oliverybig's oil will be a popular cooking ingredient. But it can't just be a black olive, right? It's gotta be, like, a vine with black olives (or even Smolivs *shudder*) growing on it.

Next, we're introduced to Lechonk, who is the only named Pokémon in this trailer because we also get to see the battle interface. The interface isn't much to write home about, though I do notice angles in the corners that kinda makes it look like we're watching through a camera. Will Drone Rotom play a larger roll in this game?

Also, now that I take a closer look, I notice that while Quaxly's HP bar is in the lower left corner, Lechonk's is above its head. That is very much like Legends Arceus, which suggests to me that you can have impromptu horde battles against wandering overworld Pokémon in much the same way. Maybe more of that system is returning than I expected...

Also, Lechonk is the best of these three new Pokémon, visually. Still not great, but I like this little piggy better than Smoliv and Pawmi. Liking the name, too, though I feel it's a bit meme-y. Can't wait to see what porker this thing evolves into.

More returning Pokémon, a couple of which we get to see in the new trading sequence. Kind of a weird flex, but okay. It's notable in that completely done in some separate, glow-space cutscene, instead being shown flying from their trainers' hands in the overworld and passing each other in the skies above. Neat.

A lot more returning Pokémon (including some I think were cut from the other Switch games?) leading to what appears to be an outdoor battle court. My impression is that this is what Gyms look like now, though I could be misinterpreting things. I can't imagine that they're purely for having open-world PVP, though.

Oh, Pikachu's back. Okay.

Then we leave actual game footage as the camera runs through some kind of chasm, across some sea, and up a stone spire, splitting into two frames. And at the precipice(s) stand the Box Legendaries!

On the left, Scarlet's Koraidon, a red, serpentine, feathered lizard with what looks like a wheel in its chest. Clearly based on motorcycles. And on the right, Violet's Miraidon, a blue, robotic serpent with jets for legs! (I was calling them "Road Rage" and "Jet Blue" before I found their names) Personally, I'm liking Koraidon more than Miraidon, but I think I might need more incentive to get Scarlet instead of Violet.

We also get to see the box art, which has a leather-bound look it behind the effects around the legendaries. Now I'm getting even more of a fairy-tale vibe! Although, the Pokémon themselves aren't very story-bookish, are they?

Oh! And the release date! November 18 this year! For now, at least.

Then the trailer ends with a Pokéball flying across a shifting, crystalline background that suggests quantum foam to me. Will the multiverse play as big a roll in this game as it did in Sun & Moon? Does this foreshadow the "Villain" legendary? Or even the Evil Team? Or is it just how they end all their videos from now on? I wonder how long it'll be until we find out.

Incidentally, I was thinking about the Legendaries' designs and how they've been introduced, and I came...

...To a startling conclusion!

...On these games' signature gimmick!

Pokémon On Motorcycles!

Seriously, though. There's a old episode of the anime that featured "Extreme Pokémon Training," which was essentially chariot races but with Pokémon. I can easily imagine Jet Blue and Road Rage Miraidon and Koraidon in some kind of racing battle. It's probably unlikely and I'm not sure how it'd work, but it's exciting to think about!

[atakportal]

TIMES - Extraordinary Newspaper Magazine Theme

New Post has been published on https://click.atak.co/times-extraordinary-newspaper-magazine-theme/

TIMES - Extraordinary Newspaper Magazine Theme

Briefly about features

TIMES is an extraordinary newspaper / magazine WordPress theme designed to redefine publishing by making content both easier to create and consume. It combines professional looks and unmistaken typography with impressive user experience (UX) and incredible attention to details.

Enjoy your content on mobile devices, tablets and more thanks to a responsive layout, now even faster and better with optimized images and support for high-quality retina screens. This theme supports menus 3 levels deep as more than this is a burden for users to navigate. If you have more questions, please email support.

Changelog

May 12th, 2018 — version 1.4.8

ADDED - Option to show "Unique posts only" on the homepage. While, previously, only posts of the same type were not repeated, with this setting you can choose to skip the same post from the entire homepage. That includes every post on the homepage and inside sidebars/widget areas. Of course, your handpicked posts on the homepage will be displayed as usual and won't be affected by this setting. ADDED - Option to "Copy link" to the article, in the share area below article. We've added yet another way to share your articles, your readers can now simply click the button to copy the post link and share it ony any site, community or platform. ADDED - Option to "Email" article link, in the share area below article. Your readers can also send the article link to a friend or colleague via email. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks and improvements. IMPROVED - Customizer experience.

March 17th, 2018 – version 1.4.7

ADDED - Font Editor - We've added a brand new section to the customizer that will allow you to change every font on the site effortlessly. There are three font families loaded with the theme by default, you can swap them all out with almost 900 fonts offered by Google Fonts or add your custom fonts with a link or code from your font provider. Using Greek, Cyrillic or Vietnamese script with your Google Fonts? Easily add font subsets straight from the customizer! Want to use only one font on the whole page? Sure! Just check the "Use universal font?" checkbox and you're good to go. All that available in the customizer from today! ADDED - Shortcodes can be inserted directly to the homepage as part of Custom Code module. IMPROVED - UX tweaks and improvements for customizer’s publish menu. IMPROVED - Moved the "Font Subset" option from Settings page to customizer. IMPROVED - Front-end, visual tweaks. IMPROVED - Performance.

November 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.6

ADDED - Custom Code module to the homepage builder. You can now insert any HTML, JavaScript code or text to the homepage. Great for adding advertisements, even if your code is not optimized to be responsive, you can use the module's tabs to enter different code for mobile, tablet and/or desktop devices. This module is very similar to WordPress’ Text Widget, once you toggle the "Include basic styling?" checkbox, it allows you to move some of that content from sidebars to the homepage. ADDED - Smart reload to the homepage builder. We think that this feature will greatly increase the productivity of assembling your homepage. The customizer now refreshes the homepage once it detects that you are done making changes, avoiding unnecessary updates and improving the customizer's performance, especially on older devices. ADDED - Compatibility with WordPress 4.9 and it's new features. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks and improvements.

October 28th, 2017 – version 1.4.5

ADDED - Option to change ticker content font type: serif and sans-serif. ADDED - Option to disable/enable opening social media links throughout the site in a new tab, in customizer. ADDED - Checkbox to Social Media widget that allows to disable opening links in a new tab. ADDED - Option to hide posts date on the homepage, articles and across the site. IMPROVED - Social Media widget following count. Results are now loaded asynchronously to improve page loading speed in some cases. IMPROVED - Ticker content is now loaded asynchronously to avoid additional database queries on page load and to improve load speed. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks.

September 29th, 2017 – version 1.4.4

ADDED - Breaking News Ticker - This is a big one, we've actually created the whole ticker system from scratch, we started with creating the best experience by designing an intuitive and familiar UI to customize your ticker content, appearance and behavior. You can either show post: latest, oldest, most bookmarked / commented, from category(ies), handpicked or add your own content right from the customizer. Adjust the appearance and layout to fit your sites style, set your own colors, change the label text or choose the scrolling direction – all that with instant, live preview, which makes customizing a quick and productive task. ADDED - Option to disable rich menu dropdowns (Functionality ON/OFF > Other). ADDED - Option to the Social Media widget to open profile links in a new tab. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

August 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.3

ADDED - New layout for Secondary Menu Bar called "Divider". You can check it out in Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Header Layouts. ADDED - New layout for Secondary Menu Bar called "Shadow". ADDED - New background type for "Boxed" layout in Secondary Menu Bar: "Dark Background" ADDED - New background types for "Boxed" layout in Secondary Menu Bar: "Custom Light & Dark Color" which allows you to set a custom color, light or dark, for the bar’s background. ADDED - Added option to choose amount of padding / space for Secondary Menu Bar: Small, Medium, Large Padding. ADDED - Instant, live feedback in customizer for Showing / Hiding Secondary Menu Bar’s search button, date and social icons.

July 24th, 2017 – version 1.4.2

ADDED - Custom made, light and fast one-click demo importer designed specially for TIMES with clean, simple, intuitive and clutter-free interface. We've written, completely from scratch, brand new demo importer tailored specifically for TIMES, it's fast, light-weight and easy to use, you can add some demo content to your sites in minutes and remove just as fast, all that with a click of one button that conveniently turns into a slick progress bar. In short, it's awesome and to try it out just activate the free bundled Dash+TIMES plugin ADDED - New demo content called "TIMES Starter Pack". Contains everything you need to get started with the theme, a complete and lightweight package, ideal for new sites and easily removable. ADDED - Option to enable or disable "pinch to zoom" on devices with touch screens. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

June 15th, 2017 – version 1.4.1

ADDED - Optional print button in the interaction area. You can enable it or disable it by going to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Show/Hide and (un)checking the "Print Button Below Post" checkbox. ADDED - Option to remove all theme's meta tags in case you want to use a third-party plugin for meta tags. Meta tags include Open Graph tags, Twitter tags and meta description tag. ADDED - Updates for WordPress 4.8. IMPROVED - Visual tweaks.

May 31st, 2017 – version 1.4.0

ADDED - Homepage Builder - This is a big one... We've created completely from scratch a tool that allows you to modify any element on the homepage. You can rearrange every sections, have multiple sliders or any module, each with different settings. You can pick certain posts to appear in the section in most modules or, for example, set the post type to display most commented posts from this week. This tool allows for a total flexibility and customization of your homepage, on top of that it is very intuitive, nicely designed, clean and without unnecessary clutter. The builder is very smart and adaptable, for example, if you add two compatible modules that display the same type of posts, the second module will not show the same posts, they will be offseted. There are plenty of unique touches like that and this paragraph is already too long so I would recommend that you give the builder a try by going to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Homepage Layout. Oh and don't worry! Every change you've made to the slider or other modules through the customizer will be converted to the builder so you don't have to redo your layout! IMPROVED - Slider section from customizer was moved to the Homepage Layout section and all your settings will be mirrored to the homepage builder. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

April 30th, 2017 – version 1.3.9

IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks. IMPROVED - Main menu experience. IMPROVED - Hero image performance.

April 3rd, 2017 – version 1.3.8

ADDED - New widget called "Category Posts" that allows you to display articles from specific category in any post-excerpt format neatly in the sidebar. You can also pick the number of posts to show as well as set the time-range. IMPROVED - Few visual tweaks.

March 23rd, 2017 – version 1.3.7

IMPROVED - Customizer looks and experience. Biggest customizer redesign to date, we made the customizer much, much more organized, easier to navigate, less cluttered and gave it a more modern look. Every section has it’s own custom made icon and a description for easier navigation, similar settings are now grouped together to make the best use of space and each group has a short explanation to it. Words really can't do a justice once you compare the old customizer with the new one. Make sure to try it out and if find something not working properly, just go to Dashboard > Settings > General and uncheck the "Customizer tweaks" checkbox. ADDED - Dark mode. Yes, your website can now join the dark side. To change the color scheme of your site go to the Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Change Colors and pick a dark color scheme. ADDED - Sepia color scheme. Give your site the old-school look with subtle brown shades. You can change the color scheme in the same section as the dark color scheme. ADDED - Option to change the default sorting for comments.

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[cdrforea]

Awesome Tech You Can't Buy Yet: This Week's Top Crowdfunding Projects

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/awesome-tech-you-cant-buy-yet-this-weeks-top-crowdfunding-projects.html

Awesome Tech You Can't Buy Yet: This Week's Top Crowdfunding Projects

Around a dozen different crowdfunding campaigns take place on the Internet at any time. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you won't find a shortage of strange, useless and downright stupid projects – alongside some real gems. We cut through the fidgety spinners and nervous iPhone cases to summarize this week's most unusual, ambitious, and exciting new crowdfunding projects. Remember that any crowdfunding project – even the one with the best intentions – can fail. So do your homework before issuing a check for the gadget of your dreams.

April 5

Eyesy – video synthesizer

When it comes to creating and mixing sounds, you have countless tools at your disposal. We have musical instruments, MIDI controllers, synthesizers, loop pedals, drum pads and all kinds of digital audio workstations that you can use to mix everything together. But when it comes to visuals, artists don't really have many tools at their disposal. Eyesy wants to change that. It is a video synthesizer that allows you to create reactive graphics that respond to music in real time.

Arebo – full body dryer

Do you know the high-speed “Airblade” blow dryer from Dyson, which dries your hands so quickly that towels are no longer required? Now someone has taken the same concept to the next level and developed a device that blow-dries your entire body and thus makes the use of bath towels unnecessary. Strange? Yes. Tempting? Also yes.

Tau – keychain power bank

This thing has no revolutionary technology under the hood. If you tackle it, it's really just a portable battery. But what makes it brilliant is the fact that it's designed to work like a keychain – making sure you have it with you whenever you leave the house. The best? It also comes with a wall-mounted docking station and makes charging the battery as easy as hanging the keychain. Pretty smart, isn't it?

Astro Slide – 5G smartphone with physical keyboard

Physical keyboards on cell phones are a rarity these days, but apparently there is still a passionate community that keeps them alive. The latest addition to this category is the Astro Slide – a kind of smartphone / laptop hybrid. It not only runs on Android and works like a real smartphone, but also has a pull-out screen on which you can use the phone like a miniature laptop. I'm not going to lie – despite the fact that I know this thing is a typing nightmare, I still want one.

Talobrush – ultra-fast toothbrush

Are you tired of all the squeezing, scrubbing, spitting, rinsing, gargling and flossing that is needed to keep your pearl white hair clean? For decades, the electric toothbrush has been your only use for this tedious task. While these automatically oscillating tooth washers are definitely a step in the right direction, they don't remove the hassle and time spent brushing your teeth. This is where Talobrush comes in. It's a new age toothbrush that (supposedly) ends work in a fraction of the time.

March 29

Supercalla – magnetic, self-organizing charging cable

Cables are an annoying but necessary part of life. No matter how hard you try, they always seem to get tangled and disorganized. But what if they didn't? What if they could organize themselves and stay tidy all the time? This is exactly the idea behind Supercalla – a clever new cable system that snaps together with a series of magnets so that it is always organized.

Hygiene hand – EDC door opener

Thanks to the unprecedented virus outbreak we are currently living in, it may not be 100% safe to touch public door handles and press buttons for a while. So what do you do when you are inevitably in a situation where you have to push a button or pull a handle? Answer: You blow this cute little EDC hook / push button tool out and open the door. I would not be surprised if these things soon appeared everywhere.

Arcade Blaster – FPS Motion Controller

Do you remember the cute handgun controller you played Duck Hunt with in the good old days? Well, that's so on meth. It's a system that lets you get rid of your regular joystick controller and play FPS games by pointing / shooting at a pistol-shaped controller – a controller that's filled with high-precision accelerometers To give you additional accuracy.

Waffle Wow – building block waffle iron

This is perhaps the most brilliant thing I've seen on Kickstarter for months. It is a waffle maker that, thanks to its unique design, creates waffle pieces that can be torn apart to create Lego-like bricks that can then be stacked together into things. I honestly feel cheated that it didn't exist as a child.

Deskspace – relief plate for the lunar surface

Deskspace was created using data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and shows the topography of the other side of the moon – in high fidelity – using concrete. It's definitely not the most useful thing on this list, but it's certainly a conversation starter. How many people can say that they have a real 3D relief map of the lunar surface in their house?

March 22

Keyboardio Atreus – ultra-minimalistic mechanical keyboard

Kickstarter has done thousands of keyboard projects in the past decade, but this is definitely one of the best ever. It is a wired mechanical keyboard that has been reduced to the essentials without compromising on comfort and performance. Indeed, it is so reduced that, despite the lack of a folding or collapsing function, it is still small and portable enough to fit easily in a backpack.

Photonbar – programmable light wand

One of my favorite Kickstarer projects of all time is the PixelStick: an electrified rail with 200 programmable LEDs, with which you can take the most amazing light painting photos of all time. Photonbar is essentially the same idea, but in a smaller and somewhat less cumbersome form factor – and also at a significantly lower price. If you are interested in creative photography, you should definitely take a look at this thing.

Sensforce Chair Extreme – haptic feedback gaming chair

Modern video games are pretty much chosen in terms of picture and sound, but when it comes to physical feelings, they're still relatively boring. The best we get is really just vibrating controllers. Sensforce wants to change this with an innovative new haptic gaming chair that vibrates in three different zones. The coolest thing about it is that it relies solely on audio signals, so you don't need any special drivers or plugins to work with your system. Just plug it in and let's go!

The Babymaker – secret electric racing bike

There are umpteen e-bike projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but only a few are as sophisticated as this one. It is an e-bike that intentionally does not look like an e-bike, but still offers all the advantages of an e-bike. The Babymaker's battery is hidden in its normal-looking frame and has variable pedal support – but this is where the modern bells and whistles stop. You won't find any unnecessary mobile apps or annoying software updates on this bike, and that's on purpose.

Techwrap – electronic multi-purpose gear protection

This thing is just awesome. It's easy, because all it really is is a well-designed cloth that you can use to wrap your camera equipment and electronics. It is brilliant because this simple design enables it to perform multiple functions. It can be a waterproof / dirt-repellent gear packaging, a platform for your lenses, or even a microfiber cleaning cloth. It is entirely up to you and can be changed at any time.

March, 15

Tucktek – origami kayak

Kayaking is amazing, but one of the big downsides of the sport is the cumbersome nature of the equipment. To participate, you usually need to buy special frames for your car to transport them. But what if it didn't have to be that way? What if your kayak could fit in the trunk of your car? This is exactly the idea behind Tucktek's foldable kayak. Thanks to some origami magic, this little sucker collapses into a shape that is so small that you can easily install three of them in a normal trunk.

Oros Apparel – Airgel-insulated outerwear

In general, most insulated jackets use animal-derived materials (or are inspired by them) – such as wool and down. But while natural materials certainly do the trick, there are certain artificial materials that are far better insulators. Take airgel for example. Airgel is a synthetic substance that is obtained from a gel that weighs almost nothing and yet has the lowest thermal conductivity of all available materials. In fact, it's so good that NASA uses airgel as the primary thermal insulation in spacesuits – and now Oros has figured out how to put it in a number of jackets.

Himo – ultra compact folding e-bike

Folding bikes keep getting better and at this point I'm not sure how it's possible. This latest entry in the category is called Himo and is not only smaller than any other folding bike I've ever seen, but also fully electric. If you live in a place where there are hardly any suitable bicycle parking spaces, or if you are only worried about thieves, this is ideal. Instead of locking it, you can simply fold up the frame, pick up the entire bike, and carry it to the safety of your office or home. Pretty neat, isn't it?

Atypical cosmetics – AI-curated skin care

Every skin is different. Why are skin care products basically still a one-size-fits-all solution? Sure, there are some brand-to-brand and formula-to-formula differences, but lotions and moisturizers definitely don't consider your exact needs. Atypical cosmetics wants to change that and has an A.I. Supported customization platform to make this possible.

A-Zero – compostable plastic bags

There is currently a big movement going on to end the use of single-use plastic, but while it is all good and beautiful, there is no denying that plastic bags are still extremely useful and practical for certain situations. But what if you could still get all this ease and convenience without harming the planet? This is exactly the goal of A-Zero bags. They are made from plant cellulose and are broken down quickly after being thrown away.

8th of March

Prompt – eye-free watch

I'm kind of obsessed with the concept behind this watch. It's designed to be completely “eye-free” – so you don't have to look at it to determine the time. Instead, hold your finger on your face and there will be a brief burst of haptic vibrations telling you what time it is. The idea is that since there is no screen and you can check it without looking at it, you can be present in conversations and meetings.

Fire ant – fire starter for Swiss Army Knives

This thing is definitely one of the most brilliant products I've ever seen on Kickstarter. Do you know all the empty space in the corkscrew of a Swiss Army knife? The fire ant fills this room with something extremely useful: an ultra-compact fire start kit. The outer shell, which is screwed neatly into the corkscrew, consists partly of scale covered with wax. If you remove that, you'll find a flint that you can hit the back of your knife to create a spark that ignites the above-mentioned tinder. How awesome is that?!

Moft Z – flat desk stand

Standing desk kits are certainly nothing new at the moment. These devices, with which you can transform your existing desk into a standing desk by lifting a platform, have been around for almost as long as standing desks. Although Moft Z is the youngest participant in an already full category, it's something special. Thanks to its clever origami-like design, this sucker sits almost completely flat when not in use.

Freebord 5x – snowboard-like skateboard

Skateboards are undoubtedly a great tool for getting around a city, but they also require some practice to get used to – and much of that practice is usually spent learning how to brake properly. Freebord circumvents this problem with a super clever truck and steering wheel system that makes it easier for you to carry out a sliding brake – similar to a snowboard. This is the fifth generation of this design. As someone who drove (and crashed!) A few times in the first generation, I'm here to tell you that this is a massive improvement.

Impossible table – Tensegrity desk toy

If there is one thing, there will always be enough at Kickstarter, it is desk toys. Specifically, machined metal desk toys that have some sort of inspiring physical or mechanical phenomenon. Impossible Table fits this description to a T. It is a machined metal desk toy that demonstrates the concept of tensegrity: the characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure, which consists of connected elements under tension and not compressed elements.

1st March

Litta – solar powered bike light

Solar-powered bicycle lights are not a new idea at the moment, but they are not particularly common either. Why? Until recently, small solar panels simply couldn't absorb energy quickly enough to be useful in a bicycle light. This is different. Thanks to its high-end solar module and energy-saving LED lamp, Litta can fully charge in just a few hours and will work for years without ever having to be plugged in – even if you live in an area where this is not the case don't get much direct sunshine.

Locomoco – Screenless Coding Teacher

Robots that teach children to code are a dozen these days. Most take the same idea slightly differently, but Locomoco is different. Of all the coding robots we've ever seen on Kickstarter, it's probably one of the coolest. Why? It not only looks and works like a normal toy train set, but is also meant to teach children (or adults!) The basics of coding and computer logic without forcing them to stare dead-eyed at a tablet or smartphone screen. In this way, users can learn through a more tactile and practical process.

Kolude KD-1 Keyhub – multi-port keyboard

Warning: this keyboard will annoy you. Why? Because it's so easy that you wonder why no computer or peripheral manufacturer has ever done this. It is a keyboard with all the ports you could ever need: HDMI, USB, SD, USB C and a handful of others. This essentially means that you can connect it to everything, connect everything to it, and not have to reach for the back of your computer tower every time you plug in a flash drive or connect a new display. Seriously, why isn't this already a standard design feature on all keyboards?

Solid State Watch – buttonless, immutable wristwatch

This is one of those artistic, high profile Kickstarter projects that are unlikely to be mass appeal but are also so fun and extensive that I couldn't resist including it in this summary. Here's the idea: When you order one, the developers basically take the courage out of a Casio F-91W and pour it permanently into a transparent resin shell. Once this is done, you can no longer mess with it. No buttons, no functions, no nothing. Similar to time itself, it is immutable and beyond your control. It will just continue until the battery runs out and dies.

Ultrasound – ultrasonic cleaner

Ultrasona is a portable ultrasonic washing machine. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? How it works: When the transducer is immersed in water and turned on, it emits ultrasonic vibrations that create tiny cavitation bubbles in the water that violently move dirt, grime, and bacteria on everything you wash – wash and disinfect at the same time. This exact same technology is used on a larger scale in chemical laboratories, where it is referred to as ultrasound treatment. With Ultrasona, you can finally get this technology in a practical and fully portable form factor. Imagine – you could wash your clothes in a hotel pool!

February 23

Rocketbook Orbit – reusable notepad

If you haven't heard of Rocketbook yet, miss it. The company makes these amazing notebooks that are infinitely reusable and also allow you to sync / store your notes in the cloud. I'm a big fan. However, the company's newest product is not a notebook at all – it is a notepad that comes with a single, infinitely reusable sheet for your notes. Stop wasting paper just so you can write things down!

Vector Unleashed – Open source toolkit for Vector

Do you remember Vector? The adorable little A.I. Anki robot? After conquering the hearts of geeks around the world, the creators of poor little guy went bankrupt in 2019 and no longer offered updates / support. But now, if this Kickstarter project reaches its funding goal, vector owners may soon be able to revive their little robo friends and keep them moving for years to come.

Clicbot – modular robot system

Robots that teach children to code are a dozen these days. Most just pick up the exact same idea, but Clicbot is special. Of all the coding robots we've ever seen on Kickstarter, it's probably one of the best. Why? Not only is it incredibly simple and modular, it is also intended to teach children (or adults!) The basics of coding and computer logic without relying solely on a screen. This way, they don't have to stare into a tablet with their eyes dead and can learn through a more tactile and practical process.

Midea – U-shaped window AC

If you have ever installed a window AC unit, you know firsthand how cumbersome and annoying the process is. Not only do you have to build a suitable platform for the device, you also have to close the gap in your window. If you are like me it usually means that you chop up a box and accidentally tape it up to you I have a decent seal. Midea mitigates it all. It is equipped with an integrated mounting system and a clever U-shaped design, with which you can better close your window and avoid large gaps. One wonders why AC devices were not designed in this way from the start.

Makeway – modular marble track

Do you remember the reconfigurable marble toys you had as a child? Makeway is basically that, but with a handful of modern twists. First and foremost, all parts are magnetic and designed to adhere to vertical surfaces such as a refrigerator or whiteboard, so they don't take up space. Second, they are completely modular and can therefore be rearranged to create a virtually infinite number of configurations.

February 9th

Lomo Perzval 80.5 – Bokeh Art lens

Are you tired of the pictures you can take with your standard camera lenses? Check out Lomography. The NYC-based lens company has been manufacturing oddball lenses for years and is now back at Kickstarter with its twelfth (twelfth!) Project, the Perzval 80.5 Art Lens. It is essentially an artificial lens inspired by a 180-year-old 19th century design by photographer Joseph Perzval. It is equipped with some unusual functions that give your photos a unique bokeh effect and make the lens particularly suitable for portrait photography.

Solidtekniks Bigga – wrought iron pan

Cast iron pans are in many ways the best cooking device ever. They offer extremely uniform and even warmth. You can put them in the oven. If you take good care of them, they will last a lifetime. But they also have some disadvantages. Not only is it a pain, it is also ridiculously heavy. Fortunately, Solidteknics has come up with an ingenious solution to this problem: use wrought iron instead of cast iron. The company's new range of pans is said to cook and behave just like traditional cast iron, but without being so heavy and stubborn.

Fork knife – reusable flatware

As the movement to reduce disposable plastic continues to gain momentum, there are dozens of startups that are trying to sell you collapsible / reusable straws and dinnerware – especially at Kickstarter. While these products are undoubtedly useful, they are also not very practical. You have to remember to take them everywhere so they are useful. That's what makes Forkaknife so neat. It is a fork and knife that can be stowed in a wallet-sized tote bag so you can easily put it in a handbag or wallet and have it with you at all times.

Nireeka Prime – fat tire e-bike

Electric bikes are certainly nothing new at the moment. Electric mountain bikes are also not. But electric fat tire bikes? There aren't many of them on the market right now – but funding Nireeka Prime would help change that. It is essentially a standard e-mountain bike equipped with ultra-wide tires that allow you to ride on a wider variety of terrain types – including sand and packed snow. The result is that fat bikes are usually a little harder to pedal, but the electric motor will help you overcome this and plow through any terrain you encounter.

Hunu – collapsible, reusable coffee cup

Disposable paper cups may not sound as bad as plastic bags or Keurig bowls, but despite their recyclability, most of them still end up in landfills. For this reason, a duo from London has developed a solution as part of their ongoing efforts to get disposable items out of circulation: a cleverly designed cup that thanks to its unique shape can be folded up so that you can take it anywhere and avoid it first Line the use of disposable cups.

February 2nd

Round – smart ring

Smart rings are certainly not a new idea at the moment, but this is probably one of the best ever. In addition to all the “intelligent” features we expect from wrist-wearables – things like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, and sleep monitoring – it's small enough that it doesn't interfere. That is the big deal here. Unlike most smart rings we've seen in the past, this one is actually quite slim and discreet. Despite its impressively small dimensions, the battery is somehow full enough to last two full days between charges.

Jollylook – vintage style instant camera

Instant cameras are currently very popular. Maybe it's nostalgia for the Polaroid days of yore, maybe it's a manifestation of our unconscious desire for tangibility in a world where everything is digital. Who knows. Regardless of the reasons behind it, instant cameras are experiencing a renaissance. Jollybook is the latest entry into this booming subcategory and was designed with an aesthetic that's even older than the Polaroid cameras that started the trend.

The Mars Atlas – detailed map of Mars

Who doesn't love a good map book? This is probably a little bit different from the one you saw in the past as it is a different planet than the one you and I inhabit. "The Mars Atlas is the first of its kind to contain amazingly detailed maps of the entire Martian surface," the book's authors explain. “With the Atlas, designed by a team of astrocartographers, you can unleash your inner explorer and learn more about the Red Planet to your heart's content. No more science fiction, now you can discover Mars mountains, valleys and river beds – many of which are still unnamed. "

Last Tissue – reusable handkerchief system

Disposable items follow the path of the dodos. It started with plastic bags. Then we went to plastic straws. More recently, there has been a movement to eradicate things like plastic utensils, plastic wrap, and even cotton swabs. When it comes to last tissue, disposable facial tissues like Kleenex tissues are used next on the chopping block. How? To make this possible, the company has developed a sophisticated reusable handkerchief system that makes using old-school handkerchiefs a little more convenient and hygienic than before.

Bay – redesigned litter box

Cat toilets are hardly well designed. Most are just injection molded plastic boxes built exclusively to hold cat litter. But they could (and should) do much more. That's the thought behind Cove – a well thought-out cat litter box with built-in tools (like a shovel and broom to clean up stray debris) that address the reality of owning a cat and cleaning it up afterwards.

January 26th

Nebia by Moen – highly efficient shower

If you haven't heard of Nebia yet, you've lived under a rock. The company basically produces crazy, efficient shower heads that use 65 percent less water than conventional shower heads – and yet pour over enough to provide an adequate shower experience. After two extremely successful Kickstarter campaigns, it is again available with a third generation product – this time in collaboration with Moen. If you're looking for a water-saving shower head on the market, you've come to the right place.

Glamos – Lidar-based gesture control

The thing looks pretty cute. It is essentially a small electronic component that allows you to use gesture control for any screen thanks to extremely clever technology – regardless of whether it is "intelligent" or not. The secret? Lidar: The same technology with which self-driving cars “see” their surroundings. This technology records what you do with your hands, translates those movements into commands, and then sends them to the screen to which you connected them. Pretty cool, isn't it?

Bilby – waterproof silicone headlight

Headlights are a dozen these days. They are available in almost every shape, size and configuration that you could ever need. Regardless of what sport you do, there is likely to be one that is specifically designed for this activity – unless you need a sweat-proof sport. Virtually all of them are equipped with elastic fabric headbands that tend to absorb sweat and get nasty over time. But not this one! The Bilby is made of 100% silicone (and is also waterproof!) So that it doesn't absorb your forehead sweat.

Baha – shovel multitool

Multitools are certainly not a new idea when it comes to outdoor / survival gear, but the Baha shovel is fundamentally different from the leathermans and pocket knives you are probably used to. Instead of putting a few tools in the handle of a folding knife, the creators of this monstrosity decided to put them in the handle of a shovel. The result is a multifunctional outdoor tool with 21 different functions, most of which are simply not available with something as small as a pocket knife.

Porfee – blackhead vacuum

This is definitely one of the roughest, yet strangely appealing things I've ever seen at Kickstarter. Do you know these hand-held facial vacuum cleaners that suck blackheads out of your pores? Das ist es, aber mit einer Kamera, die in die Düse eingebettet und mit einem Video-Uplink ausgestattet ist – so können Sie sie mit Ihrem Telefon synchronisieren und in Echtzeit beobachten, wie sich die Mitesser aus Ihrer Haut winden. Und ja, es gibt sogar eine soziale Funktion, mit der Sie Clips aufnehmen und in sozialen Medien teilen können. Wer daran gedacht hat, ist ein ekelhaftes Genie.

19. Januar

Platyball Elite – Stativkopf mit automatischer Nivellierung

Hier ist ein kurzer Ausschnitt aus dem vollständigen Artikel, den wir Anfang dieser Woche über dieses Gizmo geschrieben haben. „Anstatt eine kleine Nivellierblase zu verwenden, verwendet der Platyball Elite ein elektronisches Nivelliersystem – ähnlich dem System in einigen Digitalkameras, das anzeigt, wann der Horizont schief ist. Durch dieses elektronische Design kann auf das Nivelliersystem über einen hintergrundbeleuchteten Bildschirm zugegriffen werden. Dieser Bildschirm ist nachts sichtbar, zusammen mit der Option, die Kamera so zu positionieren, dass der Bildschirm von der Vorderseite der Kamera aus sichtbar ist.

Die elektronische Wasserwaage ist nicht das einzige merkwürdige Merkmal am Stativkopf. Laut Platypod ist das Design des Kopfes auf den Kopf gestellt, wobei sich der Schwenkteller oben statt unten befindet. Mit diesem Schalter können Fotografen und Videofilmer die Kamera in einer geraden Linie schwenken, auch wenn die Stativbeine selbst nicht perfekt waagerecht sind. "

Tribotex Transmission – Reparatur von Nanotech-Getrieben

Trotz der Tatsache, dass Tech-Experten seit Jahrzehnten das Lob der Nanotechnologie singen, hat dies das Leben alltäglicher Menschen noch nicht wirklich beeinflusst. Zum Glück holt unsere Technologie endlich unsere Vorstellungen ein und taucht in der realen Welt auf. Ein typisches Beispiel? Dieses verrückte neue Reparatursystem für Nanotech-Getriebe von TriboTex. Es ist eines von wenigen nanotechbasierten Produkten, die nicht nur praktisch sind, sondern auch dem Durchschnittsverbraucher zur Verfügung stehen. Normalerweise wäre ich so etwas ziemlich skeptisch, aber das erste Produkt des Unternehmens war absolut legitim, daher habe ich hier keinen Grund, daran zu zweifeln.

Sinex – 3-in-1-Laptoptasche

Dies ist eines der einfachsten und zugleich brillantesten Designs, die ich seit Jahren bei Kickstarter gesehen habe. Es handelt sich um eine Laptoptasche, die sich aufgrund ihrer cleveren Konstruktion zu einem Laptopständer entwickelt – einer mit gepolsterter Handballenauflage. Es ist sogar in verschiedenen Größen erhältlich. Unabhängig von den Abmessungen Ihres Laptops gibt es wahrscheinlich ein Modell, in das es passt.

Shark Electric – elektrisches Skateboard

Elektrische Skateboards sind heutzutage ein Dutzend, aber dieses sieht aus verschiedenen Gründen interessant aus. In erster Linie ist es das erste elektrische Skateboard, das wir von Shark gesehen haben – einem Unternehmen, das damit begonnen hat, die seltsam geformten Räder herzustellen, die Sie im obigen Video sehen. Zweitens ist es anscheinend auch das dünnste Board im Spiel und verfügt über Geschwindigkeits- / Reichweitenangaben, die einige der derzeit beliebtesten und am besten bewerteten Skateboards auf dem Markt übertreffen. Farbe uns fasziniert.

Foldyroll – wiederverwendbare Tasche im Akkordeonstil

Wenn Sie noch keine Papier- und Plastiktüten weggeworfen und auf den wiederverwendbaren Taschenwagen gesprungen sind, ist es höchste Zeit, dass Sie dem Planeten einen Gefallen tun und sich der Party anschließen. Wiederverwendbare Taschen können jetzt fast überall gekauft werden, sodass Sie zu diesem Zeitpunkt keine Ausreden mehr haben. Wenn Sie jedoch immer noch auf dem Markt für eine wiederverwendbare Tasche sind, sieht diese ziemlich süß aus. Es hat ein Akkordeon-Design, das es ermöglicht, es in der kompaktesten / bequemsten Form aller Zeiten zusammenzufalten.

29. Dezember

Onpark 3 – elektrisches Skateboard

Electric skateboards are a dime a dozen these days, but this one has a feature that puts it a cut above the rest: a swappable battery system. That means that if you’re riding and the battery dies, you don’t have to find a charger and wait for an hour while the battery tops off. Instead, you can just click in a new cell and keep riding. It’s honestly a mystery why this feature isn’t more common on electric skateboards.

Flash Forest — drone reforestation squad

Ever since the industrial revolution, humanity has been fighting an uphill battle against deforestation. Despite the best efforts of conservationists, the world either burns or cuts down about 10 billion more trees than it replants each year — a problem that has big implications for climate change. Environmental organizations have been trying (and failing) to reverse this trend for decades, but Flash Forest thinks it can succeed where others have failed. How? By enlisting an army of seed-bombing drones to autonomously replant trees faster than mere humans ever could.

Skill board — 360-degree balance board

Balance boards are an amazing training tool, but the vast majority of them — the ones that are basically a plank that sits atop a cylinder — only teach you how to balance from left to right. The Skill Board is different, though. This cruel bastard puts you on top of a mildly-squishy sphere, thereby forcing you to engage more muscles in order to keep your balance and stay stable. If you’re looking to build your core muscles and boost your balance skills, this thing is worth checking out.

Alfred — robotic AI assistant

AI assistants have progressed in leaps and bounds in the past few years, but Alfred wants to kick things up a notch further. He’s basically an AI assistant with a robotic body. This allows him to do things that Siri and Alexa can’t — like following you around your apartment, understanding his environment, and projecting images and video onto your walls. It’s a neat idea, and could very well usher in a new era for AI assistants

XEV Yoyo — 3D printed electric car

This one is pretty sweet. It’s a 3D printed electric car that’s made with just 57 components — a massive step down from the thousands of parts that make up a conventional car. This essentially makes it cheaper to produce, which allows XEV to sell it for under $7K. In terms of specs, the Yoyo’s 10-horsepower electric motor gives it a 43-mph top speed, while a 9.2-kilowatt-hour battery pack provides enough juice for a claimed 93 miles of driving.

December 22

Mantour X — self-balancing e-scooter

This thing is a self-balancing scooter — but it’s not self-balancing in the way you’re used to seeing. Instead of balancing for you while you ride, it’s designed to balance itself on one wheel when you’re not riding. The idea is that this makes it easier to transport, since you don’t actually have to carry it. Pretty clever stuff!

JBL Reflect — solar-powered headphones

What if you never had to charge your wireless headphones again? What if they could juice themselves up as you walked around and went about your day? Well, that’s basically what JBL is promising with it’s new Reflect headphones. Thanks to a headband that’s covered in solar cells, the phones can allegedly stay powered indefinitely with just 2.5 hours of light exposure per day

Cameradactyl Bracopan — 3d printable film camera

This project is awesome. This dude Ethan Moses has been designing and selling amazing 3D printed cameras for the past few years, and now he’s on Kickstarter selling the STL files so that other people can build them, using their own tools and equipment. The best? You can get your hands on all the files and instructions you need for just $1. That means he’s going to need a LOT of people to back the project in order to meet his $12K funding goal!

Fingerbot — multi-use IoT switch

Want to transform your home into an internet-connected smart home, but don’t want to spend a fortune on upgrading every single switch, thermostat, and appliance you own? Fingerbot is for you. It’s essentially a little IoT module with an adhesive patch on one end and an actuator on the other. The idea is that you can stick it onto the things you already own and use Fingerbot to activate them remotely by physically flipping the switch or pressing the button.

Boost — powered surfing fin

Why paddle your surfboard when you could slap a motor on it instead? That’s the premise behind Boost, an exceptionally clever surfboard fin that’s equipped with a propellor. When not in use, the fin’s design allows your board to glide through the water just like any other board — but when you power it on, the propellor provides a quick power boost to kick you forward. No more laborious paddling out to the surf, or missing swells due to lack of speed!

December 15

Draft Top — Beer can top remover

If you’re a beer drinker, you’ll want to check this thing out. You know how you can drink beer faster if you poke a hole in the lid? Well the Draft Top lets you you take that idea to a whole new level. Instead of just poking a hole, this clever little tool allows you to completely remove the top portion of the can altogether, effectively transforming your can into a cup. Best of all, it does this without creating any sharp edges, so you’re free to chug as recklessly as you want.

Ode Brew Grinder — variable coarseness coffee grinder

Do you need a $225 coffee grinder? Probably not. You can get a passable one on Amazon for like 30 bucks. But if you are a coffee nerd and you care deeply about quality and consistency, you should probably check this one out. Thanks to its innovative grinder design, the Ode Brew Grinder allows you to dictate the size of your grind and get predictable, precise particles every time. This essentially means you can get the perfect grind for whatever type of coffee you’re making — be it French press, pour over, or even espresso.

EO Blaster — chemical-free cleaning system

What if you didn’t have to use harsh chemicals to clean your countertops? What if you never had to buy those chemicals ever again and could instead use a magical contraption that transforms tap water into a powerful disinfectant using nothing but electricity? Sounds awesome, right? Well, that’s exactly what the EO Blaster does. To clean things around your house, it uses electrolyzed water — which sounds like total BS, but it’s actually legit, and was developed in Japan to sanitize high-bacteria environments like sushi restaurants, without introducing harmful chemicals.

Mova — zip-on waterproof cycling pants

You know those snap-off pants that athletes sometimes wear before a game to warm up? The ones that, due to their unique design, can be put on or taken off without removing your shoes? Well, Mova Cycling has basically taken that exact same idea and applied it to a set of rain pants for cyclists. The only difference is that, instead of buttons, these pants are designed with zippers — so unfortunately you can’t rip them off triumphantly after you finish locking up and head into your office building.

Bagel jeans — made-to-measure jeans by mail

About a year ago, a company named Bagel took Kickstarter by storm with an innovative new take on the traditional tape measure. Instead of metal tape with markings etched onto it, the Bagel tape measure uses a piece of string and a digital readout that displays the current extended length. Now, the company is back with a new project that uses the aformentioned tape measure tech for a specific purpose: generating made-to-measure jeans you can order online. Check out the video — it’s pretty damn clever.

December 8

Space 3D — affordable SLA printer

It used to be that SLA 3D printers were expensive and out-of-reach for the average consumer,  but that’s now beginning to change. Thanks in large part to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, these kinds of printers have become drastically more affordable and available in the past couple years. Nowadays there are a bunch of them that you can get for less than $1,000, and there’s a boatload more currently in development.

The latest one to hit the crowdfunding scene is Space 3D — a highly affordable SLA/DLP printer that, despite costing just $600 on Kickstarter, comes with a range of high-end features that you typically only see on machines that cost upward of $1,500. Most notably, it has an absolutely massive build envelope that allows you to print bigger parts and pump out more stuff

Gluon — programmable robotic arm

If you’ve ever dreamed of having an automated assistant similar to Tony Stark’s JARVIS robot, you should probably stop whatever you’re doing right now and go check out Hexbot on Kickstarter. In contrast to robotic assistant devices geared specifically towards makers and designers, Hexbot is a robot arm that can serve virtually any purpose around the home, from artistic projects to 3D printing to stirring your coffee. It’s equipped with computer vision and visual processing technologies, so it can be used for an absolutely massive range of different tasks.

Diveroid — universal smartphone case for diving

If you’re going on a vacation and plan to do some diving or snorkeling while you’re there, chances are you probably want to take some pictures in the water. For most people, this means you’ll get a special waterproof case for your phone, use it once or twice, and then toss it out a year later when you get a new phone. Diveroid offers a more sustainable alternative. It’s a universal diving case that’ll work with any smartphone — even the one you might own a few years from now.

Diple — 1000x smartphone microscope

Smartphone microscopes aren’t exactly a new idea at this point, but this one is slightly different than the ones out there right now. Diple, as it’s called, is capable of 1,000x magnification. Functionally speaking that means it’s powerful enough to let you look at individual bacteriums, blood cells, and more — all through your big, bright smartphone screen. You can even pinch and zoom to make the image bigger or smaller. Pretty neat, right?

Bullet SSD — keychain-sized SSD

You know that tattered old USB drive you probably keep on your keychain right now? Imagine if it was smaller, faster, tougher, and had way more storage space. That’s pretty much what the Bullet SSD is. It’s a tiny storage device that, in addition to boasting up to 2TB of storage space, is also IP67 certified — meaning it’s water resistant and dust proof. It’s also encased in metal, so it’ll survive being tossed around for years to come.

December 2

Unocup — lid-equipped paper cup

Disposable, single use paper cups aren’t all that bad for the environment — but the plastic lids that accompany them? They’re not so great. So, as part of the ongoing movement to phase out single use plastic, a startup called Unocup has developed a solution: a cleverly designed paper cup that, thanks to its unique shape, is capable of folding up to create a lid. It basically eliminates the need to top your coffee (or whatever) with a piece of plastic you’ll only use once.

Hyper minimal calendar — redesigned full-year calendar

This is the most low-tech entry on this week’s picks, but it’s just too clever to skip. It’s a full-year calendar with a very practical and human-centric layout. Instead of displaying each month via a series of weeks that don’t line up nicely, months are broken up into four five-day weeks, with two-day weekends between them. Additionally, the first and last days of each month are underlined, so you can easily spot when one month ends and another begins.

Artiphon Orba — palm-sized multi-instrument

Artiphon broke onto the scene a couple years ago when it released the Instrument — a vaguely guitar-shaped electronic musical instrument that allowed users to play practically any sound imaginable via the familiar form of a guitar neck. It was a huge hit, and now the company is back with yet another electronic instrument dubbed Orba. This one is basically the same idea, but squeezed into a much smaller, more open-ended form factor.

Climate neutral certified — environmental product certification

You know how certain things in the grocery store are labeled as “certified organic” or “cage free” or “non-GMO”? In order to get those labels, the company has to actually get certified by an independent organization that verifies the company’s product meets certain standards. Climate Neutral certification is a new one to add to the mix — but instead of signaling that a given product or service is gluten free or non-GMO, it shows that the company behind the product has actively taken steps to offset the carbon impact of its operation. Pretty neat!

Ever Ratchet — ratcheting EDC tool

EDC tools are a dime a dozen on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but this one is arguably one of the best I’ve seen. Thanks to an exceptionally clever design, it’s equipped with a ratcheting screwdriver/wrench setup — which means you don’t have to spin it in a full circle to tighten a bolt or screw a screw. And of course, it’s got a handful of other features stuffed into the tiny little frame — including a pry bar and a bottle opener.

November 24

Epilog — epilepsy tracking wearable

This thing is brilliant. It’s basically a wearable, battery-powered EEG monitor that tracks your brainwaves throughout the day, beams that information to your smartphone, and then uses algorithms to analyze your brain activity and predict seizures. Obviously, it’s not a mass-market device designed for everyone — it’s specifically built to help people with epilepsy. Still, it’s an idea worth supporting even if you don’t have the condition.

Ebo — robotic cat toy

I’ve seen a LOT of so-called “smart” cat toys on Kickstarter and Indiegogo over the years, but this might be the most advanced one yet. In addition to standard features like the ability to drive around and encourage your cat to chase, it also has environmental awareness sensors that allow it to map out the room and avoid collisions, a return-to-home function that ensures it’s always charged, and even a built-in camera that allows you to watch as your cat gives chase. It’s nuts!

Mellow Duo — IoT sous vide machine

A few years back, Mello took the cooking world by storm with a groundbreaking idea: an internet-connected sous vide machine that could not only cook your food, but also keep it cool until you were ready to cook. That way, you could dunk a steak in the cooking chamber before you leave for work, keep it cool all day, and then tap a button on your phone to start cooking before you got home. It was nothing short of brilliant, and now they company is back with a bigger, badder version with two cooking chambers. That means you can cook two separate dishes at two separate temperatures, but have them come out at the same time. Genius!

Seesense Air — advanced bike tracker

Trackers and other anti-theft devices for bicycles are a dime a dozen these days, but this one is different. Unlike most existing trackers (which either rely on cellular/GPS connections that comes with a monthly subscription fee, or weird proprietary networks that only work if everyone around you has the exact same tracker app), this one communicates with your phone via Narrowband IoT, which basically allows it to work like apple’s Find My iPhone utility, but without any subscriptions or service costs.

Segway dirt ebike — electric dirt bike

This one hasn’t actually launched yet, so we don’t know a lot about it — but based on the video footage available and the photos on the preview page, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that this thing is going to be awesome. It’s certainly not the first electric dirt bike that’s ever been made, but the fact that it’s from Segway, one of the best rideable tech manufacturers in the world, is exciting. Fingers crossed they sell it for an affordable price!

November 17

Rumpl x Loki — travel dog bed

If you need a sleeping pad for your dog, you can find one quite easily online. Just head over to Amazon and you’ll discover no shortage of pads, bags, and other sleeping solutions designed to keep your furry friend comfy. However, if you intend to take your dog along on a trip, then you’ll likely have a bit more trouble finding a suitable canine sleeping pad. The issue is that very few (if any) dog sleeping systems are designed to be compact and portable. They’re typically made with thick padding that doesn’t compress very easily, so they don’t fit nicely into a backpack. Rumpl decided to change that.

HomeBiogas — backyard biodigester

Believe it or not, somewhere around 40 percent of all the food produced in the U.S. is wasted. We put all kinds of time and energy into producing it, but we still end up throwing a huge amount of it away and sending it off to a landfill. It’s incredibly wasteful, but the folks behind HomeBiogas have a solution. Their cleverly designed biodigester (now in its 3rd generation) allows you to collect pretty much anything that’s biodegradable — dining room scraps, meat, grease, oil, eggshells, grass clippings, and even small sticks or bits of wood — and use bacteria to transform it into cooking gas and liquid fertilizer. Pretty awesome, right?

Hyperjuice — 100W GAN charger block

Charger bricks are probably the least sexy technology of all time, but this one is actually pretty sweet. Despite being no bigger than a standard deck of cards, the Hyperjuice charger, as it’s called, is capable of channeling over 100W of power, and juicing up four devices at once. Thanks to the magical material known as gallium nitride, two of the brick’s USB-A ports support the latest quick-charging standard, and can therefore funnel power to your devices at a blistering pace. The only downside? It’ll cost you $70 bucks. That’s pretty steep for a wall charging station.

Zipbag — reusable food storage bag

As the movement to cut down on single-use plastic continues to pick up steam, there are dozens of startups clamoring to sell you reusable versions of common single-use items like straws, eating utensils, shopping bags, and even Q-tips. The latest piece of plastic in the crosshairs? Ziploc bags. You can already find silicon versions on Amazon for a few bucks, but this one from Twopillars takes things to a whole new level. It’s got a storage pouch, reusable utensils you can tuck inside, a reusable label, and best of all, a lifetime warranty. Get this thing and you’ll legitimately never have to buy storage bags ever again.

Tempest — advanced personal weather station

Home weather stations have been around for decades at this point, but Tempest might be the most advanced one yet. It measures just about everything you could ever imagine. Seriously. It’s not just the basic stuff like rain, temperature, and barometric pressure — it measures all that stuff and more using a variety of different methods, thereby giving you the most complete set of real-time weather data possible. Amazingly, it does all this without any moving parts, and also without wires. It’s 100% solar-powered and can transmit information via Wi-Fi to a base station in your house. It even shares all this data with the National Weather Service so it can make more accurate predictions for the general forecast. Pretty neat stuff!

November 10

Focusbuds — productivity-boosting earbuds

At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion things competing for your attention. With all the messages, alerts, emails, and notifications that bombard us throughout the day, it’s increasingly difficult to focus on anything for an extended period of time. That’s exactly what Focusbuds aim to fix. According to their creators, Focusbuds monitor users’ concentration levels using a process called electroencephalogram (EEG) neurofeedback. This is achieved by using embedded sensors capable of capturing this brain activity and proprietary software that analyzes it. The resulting data insights are then conveyed in real-time to the user via audio cues. In doing so, the promise is that the earbuds will help train your brain to concentrate and block out distractions over time.

Castaway — second screen for smartphones

Do you need a second screen for your smartphone? Probably not, but somebody made one anyway. It’s pretty straightforward. The Castaway, as it’s called, is basically a tiny chromium tablet that’s tucked into a smartphone case. Put your phone in the case, and it’ll be linked to the tablet, thereby allowing you to use two apps at the same time.

Fourneau Grande — artisan bread oven

Unfortunately, it’s damn near impossible to make bakery-quality bread in a standard kitchen oven — unless of course, you use something like Fourneau. It’s basically like a souped-up Dutch oven that creates the perfect environment for you to make artisan bread at home. This new version, the Fourneau Grande, is a larger version of the original, which gives you space to make specialty loaves that are longer, bigger, or oddly shaped.

The Big Sphere — Milky Way desk ornament

In 2016, designer Clemens Steffin launched his ‘Universe in a Sphere’ project on Kickstarter, creating a glass orb containing 380,000 perfectly lasered dots, each one representing an entire galaxy. His next project then aimed to re-create just our very own galaxy, the Milky Way, with every dot representing a different star. Now he’s back with a bigger version of that idea, and it’s even more painstakingly detailed than before!

Snowfeet 2 — skates for snow

Here’s DT’s Kraig Becker with the scoop: “At first glance, Snowfeet look an awful lot like a pair of sandals on steroids. Upon closer inspection, however, you’ll soon notice that Snowfeet’s straps look a lot more like a ski binding than anything you’ve ever seen on a flip-flop. Those bindings allow Snowfeet to accommodate any type of shoe or boot, then contract down to hold the footwear squarely in place. Once attached, Snowfeet are effectively skates that you can use on snow.” Sounds pretty awesome, right?

November 3

Gosun Flatware — flat-pack reusable utensils

As the movement to cut down on single-use plastic continues to pick up steam, there are dozens of startups clamoring to sell you collapsible/reusable straws and eating utensils — especially on Kickstarter. However, while these products are undeniably useful, they also aren’t particularly convenient. You have to remember to bring them along wherever you go in order for them to be useful. That’s what makes GoSun’s new reusable utensils so neat. They’re designed to pack up into a wallet-sized carrying case, so you can easily slip them inside a purse or wallet and have them with you at all times.

Ember — heated midlayer

Earlier in 2019, up-and-coming outdoor gear startup Sierra Madre launched a Kickstarter to fund the development of an innovative new insulated stuff sack called the Hot Pocket. To bring that product to life, the company developed a cutting-edge thermal panel that’s both lightweight and highly efficient — and now it wants to bake that same technology into a heated midlayer. The Ember, as it’s called is allegedly “10X more powerful than its competitors.” If that claim holds up, it’ll be well worth the $259 its currently going for on Kickstarter.

Pillowdy — hoodie with inflatable neck pillow

Neck pillows have been a staple for air travelers for decades — but why do we only use them when we’re flying? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have one at your disposal wherever you went, so you could catch a quick nap on the bus home? That’s precisely the idea behind Pillowdy. It’s a hoodie with a hidden inflatable neck pillow built into the hood. Whenever you need a quick siesta, just bust out the stowable blow tube and give it a couple of puffs. With less than a lungful of air, your neck pillow will spring to life and provide a place to rest your head.

Square off Neo — automatic chessboard

Here’s a quick cut from our full article, which ran earlier in the week: “Measuring 14.72 inches by 14.72 inches and weighing just 3.3 pounds, the Neo is designed to be a cheaper entryway to Square Off’s smart chess experience. It’s controlled through an app on your phone, which connects to the board via a Bluetooth connection. From there, you can play against Square Off’s built-in A.I. with 30 different difficulty levels. You don’t just have to play against the computer though — the app also connects you to a world of real opponents. Send a challenge and the board handles the rest, transmitting your moves to their chessboard, while theirs are sent to yours.”

Owly Pack — modular backpack

Modular backpacks aren’t necessarily a new thing at this point, but Owly Pack seems pretty remarkable. Thanks to its unique set of swappable modules, you can easily add or remove features as necessary to build out the perfect pack for your particular adventure. For example, if you’re going on a quick and easy day hike and want to keep some drinks cold, you can zip in the cooler module. If you plan on camping where you’re headed, there’s a shelter module that contains a tent/hammock hybrid. And best of all? It’s completely waterproof to boot.

Editor's recommendations

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