Most homes don’t have a 3D printer… yet. But just as most homes didn’t have a “computer” or an internet connection just a few years ago, technology can change quickly, and 3D printers could become ubiquitous relatively quickly. With 3D printers in your kitchen or living room, you could print up a Left Shark whenever you felt like it, but hopefully, no one will be doing that too often. If you already have a MakerBot or some other 3D printer, check out a few other developments that could be nice to have.
Carbon3D is a startup working on a 3d printing method that prints solid objects from a liquid medium. Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) uses photochemistry to fuse liquid resins into a solid form, creating parts from a pool of liquid that have features as small as 20 microns. This technology is potentially orders of magnitude faster than other kinds of 3D printing, and it also allows for intricate geometries to be printed easily. [url]
After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
Technological innovation is solving all sorts of problems, from major issues to minor inconveniences — but one criticism that often comes up is that Silicon Valley has a “by rich young white men, for rich young white men” culture, with most of its efforts focused on solving problems for a small, affluent minority. This week, Catherine Bracy returns as we try to understand this common complaint, how valid it is, and what can be done about it.
Ever since Star Trek: The Next Generation, who among us hasn’t thought it would be cool to have an omnipresent voice interface with a starship or, failing that, our own house? Sure, PADDs iPhones have Siri now, but it’s just not the same. Our focus for this week’s Awesome Stuff isn’t the first attempt to create a voice-operated computer assistant for the home, and it probably won’t be the last, but the Mycroft is certainly worthy of note.
The Good
One of my first Kickstarter purchases was the Ubi, an earlier attempt at this idea by a startup that now appears to have given up on device manufacturing and focused entirely on operating a cloud service. Nevertheless, it was a nice little piece of hardware and fun to play with — but it’s always fallen a little short of the smooth, perfect functioning that would be necessary to make it a seamless part of everyday life. Whether or not the Mycroft will hit a higher mark is impossible to know for sure without trying one out in person, but there are a couple aspects that make it notable.
First is the fact that it’s built with a commitment to open software and hardware. It’s built on a Raspberry Pi (with all the tweakability and extendibility that implies) and Linux, and is completely open source, with a special backer tier on Kickstarter that gets developers early access to the software which they can run on their own Pis before Mycroft is released. As for the AI processing that happens in the cloud, it’s all done using various open, public APIs for things like voice recognition and natural language processing, rather than relying on a single proprietary service like most such devices. Second is the price: thanks to all that open software and hardware, the Mycroft on Kickstarter clocks in at only $150 for the fully extendable model and $130 for the more basic version (including global shipping, and with some additional early bird discounts still kicking around too). This is considerably lower than several voice systems with fewer features.
The Bad
Devices like this are very hard to evaluate without trying them out, or at least reading some hands-on reviews — so these pre-production Kickstarter sales are for those who have faith, spare cash, or a really insatiable desire to achieve that Star Trek dream. It’s also important to keep in mind that the Mycroft isn’t especially useful as a standalone unit: its capabilities come from integration with other smart-home devices and the internet of things — or at least other Mycroft units. For people whose homes are already equipped with smart thermometers, wireless door locks, networked sound systems and the like, a centralized voice control system is a powerful tool, but for everyone else it’s just a fun toy/exceptionally fancy alarm clock. “Here I am, brain the size of a planet…”
The Okay-Free
This is an odd detail, but one that stands out if you’ve used multiple voice-activated devices before: you don’t need to say “Okay, Mycroft” to wake the unit up — just its name by itself will do. This is nice, since a lot of devices use the “okay” phrase (I’ve got “okay Google” for Google Now searches on smartphones, “okay OnePlus” to wake my OnePlus One, and “okay Ubi” for the aforementioned similar device), and while this does make that Radiohead album seem prophetic, these “okays” have a tendency to cross-pollinate and wake up the wrong device. Mycroft, I suppose, is a unique enough sound that the device can listen for it without the need for an additional trigger — though it remains to be seen whether it will be accidentally awoken by episodes of the BBC’s Sherlock.
This century has produced a new lexicon that didn’t exist a generation ago: Broadband. Apps. Connectivity. Streaming video. Social networks. The on-demand economy.
The new millennium has also produced a startling number of successful American companies with worldwide reach: Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Netflix, Pandora, Snapchat, Twitter, Uber, Yahoo, Yelp.
With so many American innovators leading and improving the global economy, it would seem natural for American policymakers to do everything possible to allow these companies to flourish. Instead, we see far too many examples of our politicians actively discouraging or burdening new services from the country’s leading American companies. With good intentions, but flawed logic, politicians are jumping in to regulate these new companies, slowing the pace of innovation.
In July, Democratic New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was forced to table a plan to limit the growth of ride hailing companies like Uber and Lyft in New York after riders launched a public campaign to stop the proposal. Ride hailing services give New Yorkers and visitors access to quick, clean and affordable transportation options and help expand the city’s economic growth by creating more job opportunities. So why are city regulators trying to slow their expansion and limit consumer choice?
Ride hailing companies continue to face pressure from courts and politicians who say drivers should be treated as employees rather than independent contractors. Labor unions are pushing this view, while ignoring that many ride hailing drivers are drawn to the flexibility of being independent contractors. (Meanwhile, taxicab drivers in many cities are also considered independent contractors, a fact that is rarely mentioned in these debates.)
On-demand economy services like Airbnb that link homeowners with those looking for places to stay are also under attack, as hotel unions join with the lodging industry to regulate, and in some cases ban, these services. The city of San Francisco is considering a measure that would cap Airbnb stays at 75 days, a move that Airbnb says will cost the city $58 million in tax revenue over the next 10 years. Why would city leaders seemingly ignore the potential good that immense amount of revenue could do?
Our nation was built on a foundation of freedom — freedom to contract with each other for goods and services, freedom to innovate and create new products, freedom to start a new business and maybe even fail at it. The government should only impose itself on industry if there’s a compelling public interest.
Rather than force new services to fit the framework of old rules, innovative startups offer regulators a chance to revise outdated rules to reflect a new reality. Ride hailing services naturally weed out bad drivers and poor service, especially when compared with the legacy cab drivers who aren’t rated on or accountable for the quality of their service. Government can and should require driver screening and insurance, but it’s the dynamic feedback nature of the wireless service that safeguards the public and benefits drivers.
Home-sharing services like Airbnb give users more options when they travel and provide extra income for homeowners. Government can and should collect hospitality taxes after some threshold of rentals, but cities benefit from the influx of tourism whether visitors stay in hotels or not. Recently, my family took a holiday in New York City, where Manhattan has few hotel options for families with children. Thanks to Airbnb, we rented an apartment for a third of the comparable hotel price.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans enjoy new services and experiences thanks to the ever evolving tech economy — whether it’s making a living from eBay or Etsy, figuring out where to eat or stay from Trip Advisor or Yelp, or enjoying new music from Pandora. Politicians need to get out of the way, let these businesses thrive and intervene only when there’s a demonstrated, compelling need — and even then, do so as narrowly as possible. The public is voting with their apps and their finger taps. Politicians would be wise to listen to the sounds of the page clicks. It’s what their constituents want.
By now, you’ve probably heard that there’s a giant robot fight coming in the near future: a US team has challenged a Japanese team to a brawl, and the challenge was accepted on the condition that it includes hand-to-hand fighting. Clearly America isn’t going to back down because of this requirement, but that means Megabots Inc. needs to upgrade its Mk.II bot — and they’re turning to the crowd for help.
The Good
Three words: giant robot fight. Picture BattleBots (it’s back!) but way, way bigger and with the drivers inside the robots. Do you need more than that? Well, the specifics are pretty cool: Mk.II is already a formidable robot, but designed mostly to look awesome and deliver long-range attacks. The team has an overall $1.5-million plan to do a significant overhaul and get the Mk.II ready to take on the Japanese bot — and they’re seeking the first $500,000 on Kickstarter. That’ll cover new armor, melee weapons, a higher top speed, and the necessary hydraulics and power systems to keep all that operational. If they can break through the target and hit some stretch goals, things start to get even more interesting: at $750k they’ll begin designing and testing modular weapons to find the best armament; at $1-million they’ll begin working with the winners of a DARPA challenge to give the currently-top-heavy Mk.II advanced balancing capabilities (like the videos of self-balancing DARPA robots that get creepier every day); at $1.25-milion they’ll bring in NASA safety experts to make sure the driver is completely protected (should this maybe be… higher priority?); and at $1.5-million they’ll apply the icing to the cake in the form of a Hollywood-grade paint job.
Even if you don’t care who wins this fight, you probably want to see it happen.
The Bad
…And if you do care who wins this fight (and are rooting for the US) then you should probably back this project, because at the moment there’s plenty of reason to believe that the Mk.II might have bitten off more than it can chew. Its opponent — the Kuratas by Suidobashi Heavy Industry — is an extremely impressive machine. The Mk.II might be a bit heavier-duty, but the Kuratas is far more maneuverable and features some pretty advanced targeting and piloting systems. It’s pretty clear why the Japanese team wanted a hand-to-hand combat component: the Kuratas hasn’t been seen sporting any particularly heavy firepower (while the US bot, unsurprisingly, has) but it’s not hard to picture it taking out the Mk.II up close by trumping it on manoeuvrability and balance — because, like so many robot competitions over the years, there’s a good chance this one will end somewhat-disappointingly with one of the bots unceremoniously falling over. $1.5-million worth of upgrades will go a long way towards ensuring this is a fair and intense fight.
The Empowering
Of course, as much fun as it will be to see these robots in action, the real dream for many will be to drive one — and that’s absolutely a possibility. Starting at $1000, all the tiers offer the chance to pilot the Mk.II — with higher prices bringing in the chance to try out its guns and fists. At the top tier of $10,000, you get to join the pit crew and get the inside view of the entire match including watching on-site assembly of the bot — and since all five spots were snatched up far more quickly than expected, the team has added another round of five, and three of those have already been claimed.
Last week, I came across two separate speeches that were given recently about the future of the internet — both with very different takes and points, but both that really struck a chord with me. And the two seem to fit together nicely, so I’m combining both of them into one post. The first speech is Jennifer Granick’s recent keynote at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. You can see the video here or read a modified version of the speech entitled, “The End of the Internet Dream.”
It goes through a lot of important history — some of which is already probably familiar to many of you. But, it’s also important to remember how we got to where we are today in order to understand the risks and threats to the future of the internet. The key point that Granick makes is that for too long, we’ve been prioritizing a less open internet, in favor of a more centralized internet. And that’s a real risk:
For better or for worse, we?ve prioritized things like security, online civility, user interface, and intellectual property interests above freedom and openness. The Internet is less open and more centralized. It?s more regulated. And increasingly it?s less global, and more divided. These trends: centralization, regulation, and globalization are accelerating. And they will define the future of our communications network, unless something dramatic changes.
Twenty years from now,
You won?t necessarily know anything about the decisions that affect your rights, like whether you get a loan, a job, or if a car runs over you. Things will get decided by data-crunching computer algorithms and no human will really be able to understand why.
The Internet will become a lot more like TV and a lot less like the global conversation we envisioned 20 years ago.
Rather than being overturned, existing power structures will be reinforced and replicated, and this will be particularly true for security.
Internet technology design increasingly facilitates rather than defeats censorship and control.
Later in the speech, she digs deeper into those key trends of centralization, regulation and globalization:
Centralization means a cheap and easy point for control and surveillance.
Regulation means exercise of government power in favor of domestic, national interests and private entities with economic influence over lawmakers.
Globalization means more governments are getting into the Internet regulation mix. They want to both protect and to regulate their citizens. And remember, the next billion Internet users are going to come from countries without a First Amendment, without a Bill of Rights, maybe even without due process or the rule of law. So these limitations won?t necessarily be informed by what we in the U.S. consider basic civil liberties.
This centralization is often done in the name of convenience — because centralized systems currently offer up plenty of cool things:
Remember blogs? Who here still keeps a blog regularly? I had a blog, but now I post updates on Facebook. A lot of people here at Black Hat host their own email servers, but almost everyone else I know uses gmail. We like the spam filtering and the malware detection. When I had an iPhone, I didn?t jailbreak it. I trusted the security of the vetted apps in the Apple store. When I download apps, I click yes on the permissions. I love it when my phone knows I?m at the store and reminds me to buy milk.
This is happening in no small part because we want lots of cool products ?in the cloud.? But the cloud isn?t an amorphous collection of billions of water droplets. The cloud is actually a finite and knowable number of large companies with access to or control over large pieces of the Internet. It?s Level 3 for fiber optic cables, Amazon for servers, Akamai for CDN, Facebook for their ad network, Google for Android and the search engine. It?s more of an oligopoly than a cloud. And, intentionally or otherwise, these products are now choke points for control, surveillance and regulation.
So as things keep going in this direction, what does it mean for privacy, security and freedom of expression? What will be left of the Dream of Internet Freedom?
She goes on to note how this centralization comes with a very real cost: mainly in that it’s now one-stop shopping for government surveillance.
Globalization gives the U.S. a way to spy on Americans?by spying on foreigners we talk to. Our government uses the fact that the network is global against us. The NSA conducts massive spying overseas, and Americans? data gets caught in the net. And, by insisting that foreigners have no Fourth Amendment privacy rights, it?s easy to reach the conclusion that you don?t have such rights either, as least when you?re talking to or even about foreigners.
Surveillance couldn?t get much worse, but in the next 20 years, it actually will. Now we have networked devices, the so-called Internet of Things, that will keep track of our home heating, and how much food we take out of our refrigerator, and our exercise, sleep, heartbeat, and more. These things are taking our off-line physical lives and making them digital and networked, in other words, surveillable.
At the end of her speech, Granick talks about the need to “build in decentralization where possible,” to increase strong end-to-end encryption, to push back on government attempts to censor and spy.
And that’s where the second speech comes in. It’s by the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle. And while he actually gave versions (one longer one and one shorter one) earlier this year, he just recently wrote a blog post about why we need to “lock the internet open” by building a much more distributed web — which would counteract many of Granick’s quite accurate fears about our growing reliance on centralized systems.
Kahle also notes how wonderful new services are online and how much fun the web is — but worries about the survivability of a centralized system and the privacy implications. He notes how the original vision of the internet was about it being a truly distributed system, and it’s the web (which is a subsegment of the internet for those of you who think they’re the same), seems to be moving away from that vision.
Contrast the current Web to the Internet?the network of pipes on top of which the World Wide Web sits. The Internet was designed so that if any one piece goes out, it will still function. If some of the routers that sort and transmit packets are knocked out, then the system is designed to automatically reroute the packets through the working parts of the system. While it is possible to knock out so much that you create a chokepoint in the Internet fabric, for most circumstances it is designed to survive hardware faults and slowdowns. Therefore, the Internet can be described as a ?distributed system? because it routes around problems and automatically rebalances loads.
The Web is not distributed in this way. While different websites are located all over the world, in most cases, any particular website has only one physical location. Therefore, if the hardware in that particular location is down then no one can see that website. In this way, the Web is centralized: if someone controls the hardware of a website or the communication line to a website, then they control all the uses of that website.
In this way, the Internet is a truly distributed system, while the Web is not.
And, thus, he wants to build a more distributed web, built on peer-to-peer technology that has better privacy, distributed authentication systems (without centralized usernames and passwords), a built-in versioning/memory system and easy payment mechanisms. As he notes, many of the pieces for this are already in existence, including tools like BitTorrent and the blockchain/Bitcoin. There’s a lot more in there as well, and you should read the whole thing.
Our new Web would be reliable because it would be hosted in many places, and multiple versions. Also, people could even make money, so there could be extra incentive to publish in the Distributed Web.
It would be more private because it would be more difficult to monitor who is reading a particular website. Using cryptography for the identity system makes it less related to personal identity, so there is an ability to walk away without being personally targeted.
And it could be as fun as it is malleable and extendable. With no central entities to regulate the evolution of the Distributed Web, the possibilities are much broader.
Fortunately, the needed technologies are now available in JavaScript, Bitcoin, IPFS/Bittorrent, Namecoin, and others. We do not need to wait for Apple, Microsoft or Google to allow us to build this.
What we need to do now is bring together technologists, visionaries, and philanthropists to build such a system that has no central points of control. Building this as a truly open project could in itself be done in a distributed way, allowing many people and many projects to participate toward a shared goal of a Distributed Web.
Of course, Kahle is hardly the first to suggest this. Nearly five years ago we were writing about some attempts at a more distributed web, and how we were starting to see elements of it showing up in places the old guard wouldn’t realize. Post-Snowden, the idea of a more distributed web got a big boost, with a bunch of other people jumping in as well.
It’s not there yet (by any stretch of the imagination), but a lot of people have been working on different pieces of it, and some of them are going to start to catch on. It may take some time, but the power of a more decentralized system is only going to become more and more apparent over time.
One of the oft-touted features of 3D printers, especially in the early days, was the ability to scan an object and reproduce it. But as the printers themselves have become cheaper and more accessible, the focus seems to have shifted to downloadable and shareable designs, with little attention being paid to the scanning devices that help complete the “replicator” vision of our 3D printing future. This week we’re looking at Bevel, an low-cost device that brings 3D scanning to any smartphone.
The Good
The most immediately noticeable thing about Bevel is the price. Some personal 3D scanners exist in the range of thousands of dollars, and a growing number in the range of hundreds, but I’ve never seen one that clocks in at a mere $50 like the Bevel. And this isn’t something that produces faux-3D images with some forced depth — it’s a proper scanning laser that works in concert with a smartphone’s existing camera to build a true 3D model of an object. The resultant models are 3D-printing compatible (though likely not without some care and tweaking, as is generally the case) and quite impressively detailed for such a small, low-cost device. Interestingly, the Bevel is not a USB/Lightning peripheral, but rather uses the headphone/microphone jack — which is great for compatibility, though it does mean it needs to be separately charged since it can’t draw power from the phone.
The Bad
The Bevel does appear to be tied down to a proprietary app, though for such a smartphone-specific device requiring presumably quite complex software, that’s not a huge shock. I’d love to see more interoperability in smartphone peripherals, and the separation of device drivers from specific apps, but it’s hard to lay the blame for that solely at Bevel’s feet. More curious and concerning is their insistence on trademarking the term “Genuine 3D” to describe Bevel’s photos. While I understand the desire to differentiate Bevel from apps that create a fake 3D photo effect, trying to turn the concept of a proper 3D scan/photo combination into a trademarked brand name seems unnecessary and potentially problematic, given that it’s a function and a type of media that is going to become increasingly commonplace.
The Creepy
Bevel’s 3D photos are quite impressive. It can capture very complex objects, even people, with a high level of detail. But… the results when it comes to people, while technically appreciable, are creepy as hell. I totally understand the desire to show off the Bevel’s capabilities, but using terrifying renderings of their team members as flagship examples is an odd choice. I can see lots of uses for the Bevel, but their marketing material seems to suggest the most popular will be capturing moments with friends, which I frankly doubt unless your friends are already wrinkly zombie creatures.
We live in a world that venerates “ideas” but ignores the fact that even the best idea is worthless if it’s poorly executed. In turn, people who “copy” ideas are often demonized, even when it’s their superior execution that is responsible for their success. But the truth is that copying is a critical part of innovation and progress, and the instinct to ignore or refute that idea has left us without many clear measurements of its impact — not to mention lots of bad policy, and a highly problematic “ownership culture” when it comes to ideas and creative output.
GoPro cameras were a revolution in the world of video, enabling a level of high-action photography with a low-cost, out-of-the-box solution. In general, there’s a growing number of rugged outdoor devices for capturing video, pictures and sound — but there’s still a stumbling block for people who venture to the corners of the earth with their cameras in tow. This week, we’re looking at the Gnarbox, which could be the final piece of the puzzle for outdoor action photographers.
The Good
What’s the one stumbling block I mentioned? Simple: dealing with all your footage. A day out with a GoPro at full resolution generates gigabytes of video, leaving you with two main options, neither of them great. You can carry a bunch of backup memory cards for the camera, or you can add a laptop to your travelling kit — largely negating the ability to just toss a bunch of extremely rugged gear in your bag without fear of damage (or requiring the purchase of a rugged outdoor laptop — something far rarer and more expensive than a camera).
Gnarbox is the new third option: a tiny, heavy-duty device that’s halfway to being a full-fledged computer. It has 128gb of internal storage, so you can quickly load it up with the day’s footage (by USB or with the built-in SD card reader), but that’s just the beginning: it also has its own GPU and CPU, and serves as a WiFi hotspot to create a local network. This means that once you’ve got the footage loaded up, you can wirelessly connect to the Gnarbox with your smartphone, control it via the app, and actually start editing and sharing videos — even full-resolution 4K ones. Not only does this eliminate the problem of dealing with all your footage and clearing off your camera for the next day’s adventure, it also makes it easy to rapidly share the videos you are creating without needing to wait until you reach a computer-equipped home base.
The (Not Actually) Bad
In many of these Awesome Stuff posts, I’ve bemoaned the fact that otherwise-cool devices are so often limited by the choice to make them exclusively smartphone-controlled. But the Gnarbox is a different case: its entire purpose is to replace more robust computers in situations where they aren’t ideal, and to bring a level of video editing capability to your phone that was formerly the exclusive realm of higher-power devices. So, for once, I have no complaints about the fact that it requires the use of an Android or iOS app, since if you’re near a desktop or laptop then you don’t have any need for it to begin with. That’s the right reason to build a smartphone-only device: not because you want to lock people in to your proprietary app or you want to block power-users from getting into the nuts and bolts of your product, but in order to bring a new capability to smartphones that they didn’t have before. Editing 128gb of 4k footage certainly qualifies.
The Inexpensive
If any of this has piqued your interest, now is the time to go check out the Gnarbox, because there are some pretty great deals for Kickstarter backers. Even the projected retail price of $250 is attractive for such a device, but the Kickstarter rewards knock 40% off that price and let you order one for only $150, two for only $279, or a big pack of ten for only $100 a pop. But be warned, these are all limited quantities, and not just for the early bird prices but for the device itself — the initial Kickstarter run of 1000 Gnarboxes is already down to less than 200, so there doesn’t seem to be much time left.
The last several weeks have focused on tech and gadgets, but this week we’re taking a break from that to look at a project I know will interest a lot of folks here at Techdirt. Instead of running down “The Good” and “The Bad”, let’s just explore why the new crowdfunded book Made With Creative Commons could be a great addition to the conversation about culture in the digital age.
For years, we’ve repeatedly brought up the fact that there’s no silver bullet business model for creators in the digital age, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make money. We’ve also been pointing out countless creator success stories, and virtually all of them are based on some highly original or custom-tailored approach to monetizing work. Many of those stories have been met with complaints that they aren’t replicable, but that’s exactly the point: without a silver bullet, every creator needs to figure out what business model works for them, not just copy what has (or hasn’t) worked for others.
The folks behind Made With Creative Commons are acutely aware of this idea. The book aims to catalogue a huge list of artists and creators who are successfully making a living online with their creativity while keeping their work open and shareable, and take a closer look at exactly how they are doing it. This can serve two purposes: a source of business inspiration and ideas for other creators, and a resource for open culture supporters in the ongoing debate about copyright and control. In that latter sense, it’s like a more thorough version of the link-laden paragraphs you’ve seen us deploy here on Techdirt from time to time, whenever a successful creator is called a ‘fluke’:
Backers of the project also get to cast votes for creators who they think should be included, and then of course the final product will itself be released under a Creative Commons license. But with less four weeks to go, the project still has a considerable amount of funds to raise in order to hit its goal — so if you’d like to see a book like this in production, or have strong opinions about who deserves to be featured inside, head on over to the project page and show your support.
