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Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

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Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#51

Post by Albright »

thomnottom wrote: post #15
dhimes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a single beam, yes. But what I find incredible is that it didn't work worth a damn. They were struggling to cut one hair at a time. Definitely not the razor I want. I wonder how much scamming goes on with kickstarter, etc. I've been involved in a couple of projects (as payer, not seller) and am batting about 1/3.

Just curious what you mean by 1/3. Is that how many have failed or how many you think are actual scams? Of the several I've done (of which there have been a few failures) there's only one that I would consider a scam (and they actually refunded the money). This one definitely sounds like a scam - especially how quickly they jumped to another platform without addressing the questions.

I'm 4/5, meaning that of the five projects I've backed, four delivered what they promised and one turned out to be, if not a total scam, at least a project where the creators lied about how far along they were in prototyping and currently haven't posted a project update in almost three months -- I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that their intentions were good, but they quickly got over their heads so they took the money and ran. (Here's that project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wicoz/milk-nanny-the-wo... )

I was very frustrated by the degree to which Kickstarter would take any responsibility after the project clearly started going south. Even though this project was a "Staff Pick!!", implying, to me at least, a higher quality project than normal, they didn't seem to have any interest in holding the creators to account. After they wouldn't refund my money, I did a chargeback through my bank. I then got a message from "Kickstarter Integrity" scolding me and telling me they were blocking my account from pledging for 30 days and telling me to tell my bank to cancel the chargeback! These guys take the money and run, and my integrity is challenged! It was pretty friggin' insulting.

The experience might not have turned me off of Kickstarter forever, but I will definitely be more cautious before throwing my money at any other project on the site. It would be great to see a KS alternative which is willing to hold vendors more responsible.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#52

Post by teekert »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #45
DannoHung wrote: post #40

The thing that is weird about this case is that one of the principals, Morgan Gustavsson, is actually the dude who invented the real laser hair removal that is used in clinics and has been involved in dermatology since. I don't know if he was actually involved in this project or not, but that was the one thing that made me think that this maybe wasn't 100% a scam? Anyway, the implication they make in their pitch isn'…

Still makes no sense. The heat/power requirements to burn off hair are ridiculous and dangerous to use. Look at those overpowered laser pointers that can barely pop a balloon. These devices can blind a person easily. Hair is much, much tougher and would require magnitudes more power. >Morgan Gustavsson Dunno, but people cash out all the time. Race car drivers endorsing crappy mass produced cars, etc. I'm especially c…

It could be like the Lumea from Philips where light energy is absorbed by the hair causing it to fall out. Note, the Lumea does not work on blonde hair, its working principle is based on absorption of energy by the pigment that also colors hair (like a black shirt getting hot in the sun).

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#53

Post by steckerbrett »

kyzyl wrote: post #49
steckerbrett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light has a fun property of being bent when it passes through substances that have different optical densities. With some combinations of material and process we can exploit this property to achieve total internal reflection[0]. With a cylindrical glass rod we can fire light down it in such a way that it bounces off the walls and makes it to the far end without ever exiting through the sides. This is used in fiber op…

While I'm not making any statement about the feasibility of the Skarp, I think you might be exaggerating the size of a moderately powerful modern lasers. At my company's R&D lab I have some 1W CO2 lasers that, similar to what what you describe, are about the size of loaf of bread. They run on three phase power, have inch-thick cables and required hilariously large cooling shrouds. Two facts about those types of laser…

Perhaps a little exaggeration, agreed. The wavelengths you want are in the UV end of things, which I assumed would be mostly clumsy CO2 tubes. Just the concept of giving a consumer a high power laser they can't even see makes me extremely uncomfortable regardless of how plausible the rest of it is. Mistakes with that sort of thing are permanent, you don't get any second chances if you blast out your retina.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#54

Post by nitrogen »

Chathamization wrote: post #43
steckerbrett wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire…

There seems to be a large number of people who are convinced that the only difference between the present day and a SciFi wonderland is human will. For example, look at the people who think Mars colonization is a good idea, or the popularity of Ray Kurzweil (and to a lesser extent, people who are overly optimistic about self-driving cars).

All of the things you listed are significantly more feasible than a laser shaver.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#57

Post by MaxPower9 »

notahacker wrote: post #34
dogma1138 wrote: post #19

It's sad that people thought it was real, forget about lasers and stuff it's basic common sense. A AAA battery doesn't store enough power to drive a laser capable of burning hair for any reasonable amount of time. When the laser isn't interrupted by the hair it has to go some where which means that heat is produced, if it can get something hot enough to burn the hair off it would get hot enough that you won't be able…

In fairness, most people have very little idea of basic physics, and this project has something in common with the sort of extremely dubious projects even investment professionals throw their weight behind: a founder with credible-sounding paper credentials.

Also, most people are looking for a 'quick fix' to everyday troubles. Just look at how many weight loss products there are. Everyone wants an easy solution.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#58

Post by logfromblammo »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #16
Pxtl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

Or ask and EE what a closure is. But seriously, some programmers will actually know what a MOSFET is.

I am a programmer that knows what a MOSFET is. I had to know in order to pass intro to digital logic.

They are 4-connection devices, but usually source is connected to body. They come in n-type and p-type, and usually operate in enhancement mode, where the channel between source and drain opens when the signals to gate and body are different. With those, you can either pass a weak digital 0 or a strong 1, or a weak 1 and a strong 0, so in order to produce a digital output that has strong 0 or strong 1 for every possible input and doesn't "leak" power, you can combine the result of the 0 logic with the result of the 1 logic. Hence the term complimentary MOS (CMOS).

So a CMOS NOT gate has 2 MOSFETs: one n-type, and one p-type. A NAND gate has 4 MOSFETs, 2 of each type: the zero logic connected in series, and the one logic in parallel.

This knowledge--that I never really needed to write software for a living--was all building up to constructing a basic ALU using digital logic gate chips on breadboards with DIP input switches, LED outputs, and a manually-switched clock signal. I'm glad that I know it, but I'm mostly willing to trust the folks at Intel and AMD to do 64-bit ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, and MOD correctly on integers.

Should I ever really need to, I could probably pick apart a very high-resolution image of a CMOS chip. I wouldn't necessarily be able to design such a chip, but I could eventually tell you what it does. And knowing what I know, I also have some idea that manipulating 32-bit floats on an 8-bit integer ALU is going to require much more complexity in the microcode or software.

That level of detail is not necessary for me to know that shaving with a laser is practically untenable in 2015. It's the sort of thing that I might expect in sci-fi as a hand-wavey sort of marker of a futuristic setting, but it will probably never happen. It's more likely that we'll have an epigenetic treatment that simply instructs follicle cells to either stop growing hair entirely, or to make the hairs they grow be pigmentless and reduced in diameter. Until then, steel blades will continue to work just fine.

Even there, I am still skeptical that five parallel blades are really better than one. So to me, when you propose that I shave with a laser, I will roll my eyes at you just as hard as if you suggested that I pay 40% more per shave to add a sixth blade and a magnet to my razor. Human hair is not evolving defenses against older shaving technology. You can still scrape your face with knapped flint if you needed to.

If people are stupid about laser shaves, it may be because they have been well primed for this nonsense by the advertisements of Schick and Gillette and their flexy, bendy, swivelling, lubricating, blinking, bleeping, 20-bladed shaving heads.

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#59

Post by ortusdux »

In light of the recent actions of the Washington State Attorney General, it takes balls to try and pull a scam like this. The AG ruled against the people behind a kickstarter campaign for a card game when they did not ship rewards for two years. The original campaign raised 25k and the judgement was for 56k. The ruling was on behalf of 31 residents out of 810 backers. The company is slowly shipping units and it looks like the AG is backing off.

But this whole thing brings up many interesting questions. The fine was 1k per WA resident + reimbursement + legal fees. Knowing that the AG has your back if things go south should undoubtedly embolden WA residents, which may lead to a higher percentage of backers coming from that state, which in turn would mean a higher fine if things fall through. I honestly was going to have my sister, a WA state resident, back this for me for my birthday, if it survived to the last day of funding.

Links:

http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-makes-crowdfunde...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/213177064/asylum-playin...

Re: Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter

#60

Post by rebootthesystem »

DannoHung wrote: post #40

The thing that is weird about this case is that one of the principals, Morgan Gustavsson, is actually the dude who invented the real laser hair removal that is used in clinics and has been involved in dermatology since. I don't know if he was actually involved in this project or not, but that was the one thing that made me think that this maybe wasn't 100% a scam? Anyway, the implication they make in their pitch isn'…

I knew this was a scam the instant I saw it. Kickstarter needs to have something like a $1 buy to comment without pledging or simply allow those of us with sufficient Kickstarter "karma" (however that is measured) to comment for free.

The fact that they didn't have a video of someone actually shaving was icing on the cake. The video "demo" that's on youtube is such bullshit I wonder what they thought they'd accomplish by posting it. Show me someone putting laser to face, someone with warts, pimples and less-than-smooth complexion. Then, maybe then, we can talk.

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