At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion crowdfunding campaigns on the web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there — alongside some real gems. In this column, we cut through all the worthless wearables and Oculus Rift ripoffs to round up the week’s most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects. But don’t grab your wallet just yet. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project can fail — even the most well-intentioned. Do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.
Flat bike tires are a problem that has plagued the cycling community ever since we ditched metal wheels for rubber ones, but despite the fact we’ve been dealing with flats for nearly a century now, nobody’s really developed a great solution to the problem yet. To this day, in the event that you find yourself deflated and immobilized, you’ve typically got two options: Either take the tire off and replace the inner tube, or fill it with some kind of slime or ooze that will (hopefully) seal up the hole. Neither method is particularly convenient, so wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to worry about flats in the first place?
Nexo Tires are built around that very concept. Instead of air-filled innertubes that are susceptible to punctures, Nexo tires are completely airless — thereby rendering them impervious to going flat. The modified solid tire design is comprised of a polymer blend with a series of holes that have been engineered to offer exceptional control and outstanding durability. Each Nexo tire is expected to last for up to 5,000 miles as compared to approximately 3,000 miles for a standard high-end rubber bicycle tire.
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Blue Origin joins the satellite internet race with its 6 Tbps TeraWave network
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