The Skarp laser razor, fully funded on Kickstarter, could do away with disposable razors forever. It uses light to cut unwanted hair, eliminating blades.
Morgan Gustavsson had the idea for a laser razor back in 2001. The trick was finding a wavelength that applied to every hair type. He attacked the problem with the expertise he gained from thirty years of work with medical and cosmetic lasers.
After Paul Binun joined him in 2013, the pair found a particular chromophore that responded to a certain wavelength. This chromophore is a standard characteristic of all human hair — gender or race is not a factor.
Yes, this will look awesome in your bathroom, but it’s not just a superficial upgrade from a good ol’ fashioned blade. A laser razor might actually be better for troubled skin. It burns the hairs it passes over, and doesn’t irritate the skin. The hairs are left with a rounded edge at skin level as opposed to the usual sharp pricklies left by a traditional razor. This means a smoother feel with less risk of ingrown hairs, which can be particularly troubling for those with curly hair.
Made of 6061 aluminum, both the black and silver prototypes shown have a classic look that makes a nice counterpoint to the future-is-now concept. The mean red line of the laser just screams “Dark Side.” It doesn’t really have the thrill factor of a Sith; it’s considered a Class 1 medical device, which means it’s on a danger level with dental floss.
The device can be rinsed under water, though you don’t need water to use it. According to an update on their Kickstarter page September 23, the inventors are considering providing both AAA battery and a non-replaceable but rechargeable battery options to backers. Under normal use, the AAA should last about a month, according to the Skarp Technologies team.
The firm reached its $160,000 funding goal in two days, indicating a great deal of interest. Backers are asking a lot of questions, though, and rightly so. One backer brought up concerns about post-inflammation hyperpigmentation sometimes caused by laser hair removal, resulting in an explanation of how Skarp covers 1/100,000 the area while using a fraction of the intensity of the lasers currently used to burn away hair underneath the skin.
And there is a related patent on record. Skarp has promised to post a demo on their Kickstarter page, and we’re waiting to see how that turns out. The team explained it won’t be perfect; since they don’t currently have the tech to machine the fiber optics required for the laser to be perfectly straight down to the micron.
That’s why they’ve started the campaign, to fund the required mass machining. The Kickstarter campaign will end October 19. As of now the going charge to get a Skarp razor is $140.
The Dollar Shave Club guy is probably eating his heart out right now. He’d better get on board because if this Kickstarter delivers, Skarp could change the face of shaving. Get it?
Update 9/24/15: Edited to correct laser area measurements
Update 10/13/15: Skarp’s Kickstarter campaign has been suspended. Unfortunately, the campaign failed to meet some aspects of Kickstarter’s requirements. For instance, they don’t have a fully working prototype, which Kickstarter requires. In short, a razor with a laser “blade” doesn’t actually exist, and that is a fundamental problem for the big KS, perhaps the most trusted crowd funding site.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.