SnakeOil
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The bogus expert and social media chicanery of DC’s top cyber think tank
Like viruses, cybersecurity charlatans are incidental guests in the body of infosec. These men sell false expertise, conspiracy theories, and invisible security potions and they are as unintentionally hilarious as they are alarming. Case in point: BuzzFeed's exposé of James Scott, cofounder of Washington DC's big cybersecurity think tank, ICIT (Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology).
Dr. Oz wants to sell you a heart-monitoring smartwatch
Perennial snake oil salesman Dr. Oz has found a new way to take your make money: a wearable. The press release promises the iBeat Life Monitor is "lifesaving" smartwatch that "empowers people to live longer lives." The big difference here versus offerings from, say, Apple or Withings, is that the iBeat apparently monitors your heartbeat nonstop, and, in the event of a "life-threatening heart emergency," the wearable will contact relatives, friends and medical professionals.
LessLoss BlackBody: improve your sound for just $959 and your sense of reason
The high-end audio market has always been more about marketing than about music, but it's hard to say if we've ever seen a product as phenomenally insane as the LessLoss BlackBody, a $959 block of metal that designer Louis Motek says "takes advantage of the quantum nature of particle interaction" to improve your stereo's sound quality by simply being in the same room. How? "Your gear's radiation is transformed into room-temperature blackbody radiation." Yeah -- and that's just the tip of this crazy iceberg. We can't say we believe it for a second, but LessLoss says that the BlackBody is so effective at altering "electromagnetic ambient conditions" that the quality improvement is obvious to "even non-audiophiles" listening to "a noisy home PC playing through your average SoundBlaster." That sounds like a challenge to us -- hit us up, LessLoss.
Video: Pocket Pain Doctor is the worst iPhone app. Ever.
The Pocket Pain Doctor is an iPhone app "guaranteed to invigorate your mind" and rid you of such pesky things as fatigue, drowsiness, and acne. Of course, it also has all the telltale signs of modern day snake-oil: questionable claims about "Bluwave" and "Redwave" technology, "clinical proof" that has nothing to do with the product, and the faux sophistication of using "exacting nanometers" to adjust the, uh, brightness. Cherry on the cake? It's made by the same creepy one-man clown show responsible for the Pocket Cemetery app. Read - Pocket Pain Doctor website
HIS iClear claims to reduce noise, really just fills an empty PCIe slot
If you've been hankering for a good dose of snake oil, we've found something sure to satisfy. The HIS iClear card is marketed as a device that rides shotgun with your graphics card and "provides up to a 10-percent increase in signal-to-noise ratio performance." From what we can gather, this mostly barren piece of kit is supposed to reduce noise generated by your graphics card (or something to that effect), but considering that NewEgg gives this thing away for free with GPU purchases, we feel our doubts about its effectiveness as justified.[Via BoingBoing]
Pelican's PS3 Air Flo Cooler invites jokes about blowing
We're not sure we're buying the snake oil that companies like Pelican and Nyko are selling next-gen gamers -- namely, cumbersome bolt-on cooling units that may cause more harm than good. While Xbox 360 owners have been gobbling up the Nyko Intercooler, PS3 owners have been forced to deal with a system whose only cooling options are the ones put there by the console's engineering and design team.But no longer! IGN has reviewed Pelican's Air Flo Cooler, a unit that promises to lower the temperature of your already cool PS3 by 15° without causing a ruckus. How does it do it? Why, with "Auto Thermo Sensing Technology," of course. We imagine when this space age technology was first developed by NASA, they had no idea it would end up in a cheesy $30 video game peripheral. Incredible!
Today, on Not Getting the Joke theater
An ordinary person, upon seeing a guy named "Griftah" selling "Amazing Amulets" in the Lower City of Shattrathfor very high prices, may think twice before buying the amulets. But Gazzle is no ordinary gnome. He spent 25 gold on the "Polished Pendant of Edible Energy" -- whose tooltip states "Focusing one's metabolism, this pendant allows the wearer to draw great energy from ordinary food and drink -- even heal wounds!" Upon equipping it and conjuring up some food and water, he discovered that he wasn't regening health and mana any faster. Disillusioned, he posted a "Shame on you, Blizzard" message on the WoW General forums and went off to try ... the other amulet he purchased. A round of mocking follows in which a ton of people point out that the amulet does exactly what the tooltip says it does, and it's not the amulet's fault if the health and mana would regenerate anyway. It's kind of like purchasing a "Talisman of Protection from Crocodile Attacks" if you live in Minnesota -- hey, it must be working, because I haven't been attacked by crocodiles! Along those lines, Griftah also sells an "Infallible Tikbalang Ward," which protects you from Tikbalang attacks. I agree with Tseric -- let the buyer beware on these items. Or, as another poster states, "I prefer to think of it as a stupid tax." According to Allakhazam, Griftah also sells:
