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Cockmaster posted:Well, there was this thing: Thing is, a lot of work involving DNA is actually very straightforward. Like PCR machines: it's just a heating block with a very accurate timed thermostat, all a PCR machine does is heat things up to a certain temperature very rapidly, hold them there for a very specific length of time, change the temperature to another specific level, hold it THERE for a measured time, and so on. Each stage of the cycle lasts 30 seconds to about ten minutes, and then the machine just repeats that program 20-50 times. You probably COULD build a DNA (or at least oligonucleotide) synthesizer out of plywood and a raspberry pi, as a surprising amount of DNA based work doesn't actually require enormous physical precision, just a specific regime of temperatures and chemicals mixed in the right order at the right times, with all the molecular level "construction work" being done by enzymes. Also the idea that getting started with PCR would cost "$4000-$10,000" is just straight up misleading, because it's based entirely on the price of NEW modern thermocyclers, when the technology has been around for decades. A lot of these new machines are designed for more advanced quantitative PCR and Real Time PCR too, which is utterly unnecessary for doing a DNA barcode of a tree or sequencing a mitochondrial gene. If you want to do basic PCR at home, you can pick up a fully working used thermocycler for $200 or less on ebay (under half the price of the KITS this kickstarter sells), no home enthusiast or "hackerspace" needs to be purchasing brand new lab equipment when there is an absolute TON of working used kit on the market for a fraction of the price. Given the capabilities of modern machines and the basic level of the experiments most home users would be doing, it would be like buying a brand new BMW for banger racing.
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Oct 5, 2013 12:50
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I was told to put this here: HuniePop: A Dating Puzzle RPG by Ryan Koons  quote:HuniePop is a unique RPG experience for PC, Mac and Linux. It's a gameplay first approach that's part dating sim, part puzzle game, with RPG-like systems and a visual novel style presentation. HuniePop joins inspiring works like Dream C Club, Chobits, DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Catherine and many of the wonderful dating sims out there in celebrating romance, beauty and sexuality.  The lead designer/programmer (Ryan Koons) for this kickstarter formerly worked for Insomniac. He's in the credits for a few Rachet and Clack games, Resistance 3, and Fuse. I don't know what he did exactly since Insomniac lumps the core development together in its credits without a specific job title.  The game is similar to Puzzle Quest in that it's an adventure-puzzle hybrid. Think of Bejeweled/Candy Crush Saga mixed in with a dating sim. It will be available for PC/Mac/Linux. Stretch goals include: quote:$25,000 - Minor Voice Acting: Greetings, important scenes/events and expressive moans/groans. I think this would add a lot of life to the girls! There has already been a $500 backer who has chosen the highest tier. It is 'This ultra-limited opportunity includes everything from all previous reward tiers plus a one-of-a-kind custom piece of high resolution artwork featuring you and your favorite girl on a date, painted by a HuniePop artist, just for you! You also get to decide whether or not it's included as part of the Hunie-pack Plus! It just doesn't get any sweeter.'
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Oct 5, 2013 14:12
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Sunning posted:I was told to put this here: Honestly, compared to most of the crap posted in this thread, this one isn't half bad. I'd wager that there's a fair amount of overlap between the "puzzle game" crowd and the "anime dating sim" crowd, so, hey, why not combine the two? And the kickstarter page does show at least some level of competence and professionalism. It's not my thing, but I could easily see it making its kickstarter goal (and then some).
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Oct 5, 2013 14:25
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Not gonna lie I'm just happy he seems to be putting more effort in than most by ripping off a good game around his dating sim. If you're gonna go for the sad market, at least go for the brass ring of sadness.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:29
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Did they really put Catherine in there? That's like the antithesis of the dating sim.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:35
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Yeah, it's just great he's at least putting honest effort in and coming up with a decently polished result.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:36
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DaveWoo posted:Honestly, compared to most of the crap posted in this thread, this one isn't half bad. I'd wager that there's a fair amount of overlap between the "puzzle game" crowd and the "anime dating sim" crowd, so, hey, why not combine the two? And the kickstarter page does show at least some level of competence and professionalism. The art is done and the writing is nice, but it's still a dating sim with a bedroom mini game for a reach goal. A polished turd, if you will.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:36
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Not gonna lie I'm just happy he seems to be putting more effort in than most by ripping off a good game around his dating sim. If you're gonna go for the sad market, at least go for the brass ring of sadness. Considering the programmer has Insomniac Games and Activision on his CV, I can expect that the game will be at least technically competent. Whether the rest of the game is appealing is another question entirely. 
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Oct 5, 2013 14:39
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Sunning posted:HuniePop And here I thought Bejeweled couldn't get any sexier.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:42
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Young Freud posted:Did they really put Catherine in there? That's like the antithesis of the dating sim. Well, it is a puzzle game, and for all we know "rewarding for everyone" means it's possible to ruin the protagonist's life a la Catherine, too.
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Oct 5, 2013 19:17
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Does anyone in this thread have any experience in spectrometry? I've stumbled onto something that I refuse to believe isn't a scam, mostly because the advertised product is a goddamn tricorder from Star Trek. The people involved in the project do really exist and so does Raman scattering, but the fact this is a flex funding project on IndieGoGo makes my alarm bells go off. It doesn't help that their demonstration is unbelievable. Waving the magic wand over food for a couple of seconds is apparently enough for the device to figure out the presence of minute trace elements and its calorific contents. If this product was real, you'd expect to hear about it on the news everywhere. And you'd also expect a delicate, advanced device like this to cost more than $150. I know nothing about spectrometry. Am I being unreasonably suspicious, or is this a scam as I suspect it is?
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Oct 5, 2013 19:50
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Zybourne Clock posted:Does anyone in this thread have any experience in spectrometry? I've stumbled onto something that I refuse to believe isn't a scam, mostly because the advertised product is a goddamn tricorder from Star Trek. The people involved in the project do really exist and so does Raman scattering, but the fact this is a flex funding project on IndieGoGo makes my alarm bells go off. It doesn't help that their demonstration is unbelievable. Waving the magic wand over food for a couple of seconds is apparently enough for the device to figure out the presence of minute trace elements and its calorific contents. If this product was real, you'd expect to hear about it on the news everywhere. And you'd also expect a delicate, advanced device like this to cost more than $150. Considering that at school I have to use a big clunky liquid nitrogen-cooled apparatus with a big lead shield that has to be calibrated with antimatter* that requires a sample to sit still for 15 minutes in order to get an accurate picture of what radioisotopes are in it... well, let's say that I don't think that a tiny plastic thing and a smartphone are going to get an accurate reading of what's in something that isn't actively emitting non-infrared radiation. *It's not as cool as it sounds but I thought it would be fun to word it like that
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Oct 5, 2013 19:57
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I'm not super familiar with spectrometry, but from what I am, 99.9% sure that's a scam. That kind of spectrometry involves throwing extremely highly energized subatomic particles at the object and measuring what comes back from a poo poo ton of angles. That ain't all fitting in that thing. My bet? It has a camera and searches an image database and sends results back based on image similarity.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:01
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:I'm not super familiar with spectrometry, but from what I am, 99.9% sure that's a scam. That kind of spectrometry involves throwing extremely highly energized subatomic particles at the object and measuring what comes back from a poo poo ton of angles. That ain't all fitting in that thing. My bet? It has a camera and searches an image database and sends results back based on image similarity. I'm pretty sure you're thinking of mass spectrometry. You can do spectrometry just based off of radiation emissions of a hot object (for instance, looking at the light emitted from the sun was how helium was first discovered) or gamma ray spectrometry, which is how I've been taught to learn what the radioisotope composition of a substance is. But there's no way you're going to be doing that with a little plastic wand thing.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:04
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Zybourne Clock posted:Does anyone in this thread have any experience in spectrometry? I've stumbled onto something that I refuse to believe isn't a scam, mostly because the advertised product is a goddamn tricorder from Star Trek. The people involved in the project do really exist and so does Raman scattering, but the fact this is a flex funding project on IndieGoGo makes my alarm bells go off. It doesn't help that their demonstration is unbelievable. Waving the magic wand over food for a couple of seconds is apparently enough for the device to figure out the presence of minute trace elements and its calorific contents. If this product was real, you'd expect to hear about it on the news everywhere. And you'd also expect a delicate, advanced device like this to cost more than $150. I know nothing about spectroscopy and I can tell you for certain that this is utter bunk. Lets take just one of their claims, that it can detect allergens. Most allergens are proteins. Proteins are extremely complex long chain molecules, and one protein may have an identical chemical make up to another but act in a completely different way because of the ORDER of the sub-units and the way the chain structure folds up in three dimensional space. As far as I know, there is no spectrum based method for detecting the presence of a particular protein in a sample. Detecting whether a specific protein is present in a sample is really loving involved, you usually need to crush up the sample and subject it to chemical testing, a typical method might be adding a specific immunoglobulin or enzyme that reacts with the target protein. This paper details methods of peanut allergen detection in food as of 2007, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2007.00017.x/pdf (table on the eighth page, p54 of the journal) note that there are no spectroscopic methods listed here, not even ones run on gigantic static million dollar pieces of lab equipment.  here is a scientist doing protein analysis
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Oct 5, 2013 20:13
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Spectrometry doesn't work by just pointing a magic spectrometry ray at large, solid objects.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:30
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quote from a poster on the JREF forum:quote:A few other things. First, Raman spectra spread out information over a fairly small band of wavelengths---say 50nm. That means you need, not just any cheap spectrometer, but a very-high-dispersion spectrometer, to meaningfully separate these wavelengths. Now, the fiber-resonator "spectrometer on a chip" that Cosmicaug links to---neato!---is indeed high-resolution. But that's not what Tellspec says they're doing. They say they're sending light through a diffraction grating and onto a CCD. Sorry, kids, you're not getting sub-nm resolution with a spectrometer that small. Not even close.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:33
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Fatkraken posted:quote from a poster on the JREF forum: I think this poster is being charitable by assuming it's not an outright scam.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:40
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On the subject of debatable scientific devices, does anyone remember the talking bear from a few months back ? I dont remember the specifics but it was also pretty far fetched.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:48
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unpacked robinhood posted:On the subject of debatable scientific devices, does anyone remember the talking bear from a few months back ? I dont remember the specifics but it was also pretty far fetched. That was Supertoy, the world's first toy than can pass the Turing test! It turns out you just dock your iDevice in it and it basically just acts as a Siri powered Teddy Ruxpin. It won't work when its not connected to Wi-Fi, either. Iron Prince has a new favorite as of 21:01 on Oct 5, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 20:58
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It's flexible funding, so definitely a scam. The "in the cloud" line makes it sound like it's doing some sort of rudimentary image analysis on a server somewhere and guessing what the food is from a database. It's spectrometry because it's measuring an optical property in much the same way as doing the Pepsi Challenge on a college campus is laboratory analysis or a Polaroid camera is a spectrograph.
theflyingexecutive has a new favorite as of 00:12 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 00:08
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There are plenty of handheld raman spectrometers. loving expensive and loving awesome. I have tested one at the Analytica of 2011 or 2012. Very nice for checking the purity of chemicals. And yes, the kickstarter is pure bullshit. A short glance at the specs of current handheld raman spectrometers will show that.
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Oct 6, 2013 01:33
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Pie-in-the-sky MMOs are a dime a dozen, I'm mostly posting The Phoenix Project just because of the picture they used for the dev team. 
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Oct 6, 2013 07:36
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Do you play electric guitar? Do you like it to stay in tune? Do you think that a guitar should have 50 moving parts? The Riff-Raptor. The most unnecessarily complicated guitar ever.
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Oct 6, 2013 10:17
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A Good Username posted:Do you play electric guitar? Do you like it to stay in tune? Is... that a $2.3 million goal?
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Oct 6, 2013 10:20
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A Good Username posted:Do you play electric guitar? Do you like it to stay in tune? You're totally hosed if any one of those tiny, meticulous, proprietary little pieces break. But hey, at least you unmusical plebs can stay in tune because it's too difficult for beginner guitar players to load up a free tuning app on their smartphone and spend 5 minutes turning 6 pegs til the light goes green. And how on earth would you re-string one of these monstrosities? I mean, I can see where these guys are coming from, but every selling point of this thing is made redundant by a tuning app and a capo.
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Oct 6, 2013 11:14
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A Good Username posted:Do you play electric guitar? Do you like it to stay in tune? "My qualifications are as follows: I took a business class last year, and have read several books on related subjects."
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Oct 6, 2013 11:29
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Sunning posted:I was told to put this here: It's basically Strip Bejewelled/Puzzle Quest  But you forgot the best parts: The girls ...    - and more to come in the following days Oh and the Japanese one works the substitute professor for a mysteriously vanished Statistics professor at the university and the stress made her a gambling addict.
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Oct 6, 2013 12:06
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I'm not sure how to feel about that oddly-specific choice of favorite colors.  Yep. Thanks, Google. That's exactly how I feel about this kickstarter. Noni has a new favorite as of 12:43 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 12:38
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A Good Username posted:Do you play electric guitar? Do you like it to stay in tune? Gibson's self tuning guitar came out in 2007. What does this bring to the table?
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Oct 6, 2013 12:43
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One Eye Open posted:Gibson's self tuning guitar came out in 2007. What does this bring to the table? Nothing. Like 90% of "innovative" product based kickstarters are either reselling something that already exists at a big markup (like the metal cups from a while back), reinventing something that either exists or isn't needed because something better already exists (see all microwallets), or creating an "affordable" alternative to something that is readily available secondhand for much lower prices than the kickstarter is offering (like the open PCR machine).
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Oct 6, 2013 12:51
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A bit behind, but the biggest thing that tips me off about the scamminess of that food spectrometer...Those Idiots posted:TellSpec is a three-part system which includes: (1) a spectrometer scanner (2) an algorithm that exists in the cloud; and (3) an easy-to-understand interface on your smart phone. The second someone starts saying "Algortithm! Cloud! Smart phones!" you know they're usually snake oil salesmen.
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Oct 6, 2013 12:52
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Honestly if the Tellspec people are actually planning to send out some kind of product not just running an outright cash grab scam, they need to be stopped. Whatever product they send out absolutely cannot work (whoever said it might be a cheap rear end digital camera and semi decent image matching algorithm might be on the money), but if credulous people really think it can detect peanut proteins or other allergens, they could end up literally killing someone by trusting the obviously made up wrong results that the machine would give them. This is something making definitive safety/medical claims that it absolutely cannot deliver, and is probably illegal. I'd appreciate it if someone who lives in the appropriate state could report them to their local FDA or whoever it is that deals with these sorts of claims. They're either outright stealing, or are marketing snakeoil that will end up killing a child. It's depressing that in this scenario, it being a cynical scam is the BETTER outcome.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:03
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The Grammar Aryan posted:A bit behind, but the biggest thing that tips me off about the scamminess of that food spectrometer... Don't forget crowd sourcing (from their updates, bolding mine): quote:One method is combining your scan with other people's scans of the same food. Your 3 second scan may not be enough to detect a chemical, but if 1200 users scan the same food, then that's an hour of scanning, and that may have enough. That's crowd sourced food analysis! Another method is using database information. If the TellSpec database has detailed information about the food, then we can provide that information to the user. The TellSpec analysis engine will automatically choose the technique that best handles the estimated concentration level. Crowdsourcing is totally doable because you can totally tell that two people's random grocery store apple are same. From what they I think they are saying - they basically say they can match the entire spectrum to a composition, without needing to analyze for any particular component. Basically, implying they have/will have a spectrum for every food in existence, along with it's chemical composition.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:14
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gninjagnome posted:Don't forget crowd sourcing (from their updates, bolding mine): Which firstly isn't possible, obviously, but also NOT what they claim in the kickstarter. I'm gonna stick with peanut protein, because a) peanut allergies can be extremely dangerous b) peanut protein can be harmful even when present in minute amounts and c) detecting one specific protein amongst the tens of thousands of proteins present in a normal organism is pretty involved even with targeted immunoassays, and essentially impossible with current light-based analyses. You can't create a database of the spectra of types of foods that contain peanuts, because a chocolate bar made in factory A and a chocolate bar made in factory B can have the exact same recipe (they might even be the same brand!) but if factory B handles peanuts, even if they are NOT an ingredient in the chocolate bar, the allergy sufferer is at risk when eating something made in factory B. You cannot tell the difference between the two chocolate bars by looking at them, tasting them or conducting spectographic analysis of them, unless you are able to DETECT the specific protein, not take a general picture of the chocolate and compare it to a database. Same goes for contaminants, two different Tuna are likely to have completely different levels of mercury in their tissues, but it's a small enough number in either in absolute terms that their spectra would be identical. The original claim was their stupid machine can ANALYSE the food. Now they are moving the goalposts and saying they can IDENTIFY the food, and that a database of the composition of other foods that happen to match the spectrum is sufficient. Even this is a spurious claim, and it's not even what they originally promised.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:26
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Fatkraken posted:Honestly if the Tellspec people are actually planning to send out some kind of product not just running an outright cash grab scam, they need to be stopped. That's a good point and it looks like Indiegogo prohibits medical devices of this sort: quote:By way of example, and not limitation, your promise means you will not use the Service: Let's see if Indiegogo actually has a spine.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:30
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Fatkraken posted:Honestly if the Tellspec people are actually planning to send out some kind of product not just running an outright cash grab scam, they need to be stopped. Let's just remind ourselves of the guy selling fake mine detectors who just got jailed for several years. This one doesn't go to Indiegogo for arbitration, it goes straight to the authorities.
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Oct 6, 2013 13:31
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Ah but you see it's not a medical device. From one of their updates:quote:However, even if an allergen is present, TellSpec may not detect it. The scanner can only get data from the regions of the food scanned by the laser. If TellSpec has no previous record of the food, a nut fragment is present in the food, and the laser does not scan that fragment, then the nut allergen in that fragment will not contribute to the scan obtained, and the user will not be warned. I don't even know what the loving point of it is any more. Snowglobe of Doom has a new favorite as of 13:37 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 13:34
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Ah but you see it's not a medical device. From one of their updates: So basically "can detect peanuts if you point it at a peanut". And can only give you ingredient information based on the outside of the food (even though in the demos they're pointing it at chocolate bon bons that almost always have fillings). A detector that gives a substantial rate of false negatives is literally worse than nothing, because it gives people a false sense of security. What the gently caress IS the point of it? quote:We have invented a system called TellSpec combining a spectrometer and a unique algorithm to tell you the allergens, chemicals, nutrients, calories, and ingredients in your food. Can tell you the allergens in your food* *does not tell you the allergens in your food Oh, and there's absolutely no way that whatever database they might create would be more accurate than current food labels. Even if they COULD create a database of spectra which would be matched to known foods, they'd still have to do the analyses of those foods to know what the spectrum actually represented, and it would have to be a significantly better analysis than the current legally mandated one used for food labelling. Doing a full lab analysis of a single food item costs a small fortune, doing their own analyses of every food ever would cost the earth. No, what they're gonna do, if they do ANYTHING, is broadly match really lovely poor quality spectra to food types, and get all the actual data for those food types from the labels. Fatkraken has a new favorite as of 13:54 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 13:45
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Their claim of being able to piece together allergen and trace element concentrations in the single-digit PPM range by bundling 1200 separate measurements sounds like nonsense. No matter how clever your averaging technique, if the sensor just isn't sensitive enough, you're not going to detect anything. It's like saying 'I can't see through this wall but if enough of my buddies join in on staring intently at it, we can create a composite image of what's behind that wall'.
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Oct 6, 2013 14:40
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