Bizarre Tech: Cocinare KRUSH, Thin Ice 2.0, and TapFresh

Thin Ice 2.0

You’re on thin ice, mate! Well, Thin Ice is on you, so yeah.

According to the makers, this is the “world’s first ‘wearable’ weight loss clothing line”.

They also say it has been described as something “from a science-fiction movie from the 22nd century”. Now, don’t lie to us. Don’t act as if you didn’t just make that up and claim it was written by some super-duper reviewer.

Thin Ice 1.0 has been around for a bit apparently, so now it’s time for Thin Ice 2.0, baby!!!

With the new version, you wear your Thin Ice Vest and it “immediately” starts to work – allegedly helping you burn fat and lose weight. If you pop on the vest, you can apparently burn 500 to 1,000 calories a day, “based on controlled-scientific studies that feature similar features and durations to the recommended use of Thin Ice”. What did I just read?

Anyway. You control the vest by a “super-easy-to-use app”. Kay. According to the makers, the tech strategically cools parts of the body with high concentrations of thermoreceptors, “which stimulate the brown adipose tissue (brown fat) pathway”.

BIG WORDS, PLEASE EXPLAIN.

So, the Thin Ice people say that white fat cells – the ‘couch potatoes’ of the body – are designed to passively store fatty acids for use as energy. The cells “expend very little energy to subsist, and thus have only few mitochondria, which are the engines of the cell world”. Basically, they just sit on their little fat bums and wait to be used. Which can mean they wait around forever, making you fatter.

Brown fat cells are more active and don’t store fat – they burn fatty acids as a fuel source.

So, fat is burnt (in your body, not on a bonfire or whatever) to create heat to stop you from cooling down when you’re wearing the vest. Ta-da! Science.

Basically, brown fat good, white fat bad.

It runs on a lithium-ion battery, which will be located in the arch of the back, and is being “custom built to accommodate the shape of the average back”. What about us over-average backs?! Do we get nothing?

The battery’s capacity is going to be about 1-4 hours depending on the vest setting. So, if you want it at Antarctic level then you’re going to need three batteries for 15 minutes. Probably.  

The campaign was last updated in 2017, and there’s been no recent presence online. Guess the team behind the idea were the ones on thin ice after all. BA DUM TSSSSS.

TapFresh

It’s a kind of maaagic

This is a really useful idea – if it can be cheaply produced for the masses.

The team behind the TapFresh say that, according to the World Health Organization, one in three people don’t have access to safe drinking water. And more people are turning to bottled water, which is not sustainable. And the whole thing is obviously very troubling.

This gadget is a water dispenser that draws drinking water from the air “like magic”. According to the Kickstarter page, it captures unpolluted, fresh water in the air and turns it into an unlimited supply of drinking water. Like a dehumidifier, but you can drink the end product, rather than chuck it down the sink.

You plug in the gadget, and TapFresh allegedly doesn’t need a water source – it extracts water from the atmosphere by creating a heat exchange between hot and cold air (shifting ambient temperature to reach the ‘dew point’, turning water molecules in air into droplets). Thus, you get “an endless supply of clean, pure, drinking water”.

All you need is a power supply. However, what if you don’t have access to electricity? What do you do then?

There’s no point quoting WHO in your campaign, without taking into account the number of people who can’t access clean drinking water and also can’t get electricity. Duh.

The air filter for the TapFresh can be used for six months to a year, and the water filter for three to six months. There’s a touch panel which you can beep beep boop to get it all filter.

According to the campaign, it produces 20 litres of water a day, which is stored in the built-in water storage container.

TapFresh is also an air purifier, dehumidifier and water purifier, and uses 400W of power during water production. Nice!

Still, make one that doesn’t require mains electricity and then you’re onto something.

KRUSH ice cream maker

I want some KRUSH-a

Would you like to make ice cream when you’re in the middle of nowhere?

KRUSH is a wireless and portable ice cream maker which has a built-in cooling system of up to one hour, so the ice cream will be s-cream-ing because it’ll be so fast.

Apparently, the wee treat maker was “designed and developed with many ice cream lovers around the world, in different professions”. So, they blended up and used people to make the gadget?! I jest, of course.

Anyway, it has over 400g of custom coolant fluid in the bowl and the lid, so KRUSH’s Freezer Bowl creates an all-around insulated freezing system, which allegedly keeps 210g of ice cream cold and fresh for five hours at 30°C outdoor temperatures.

Are you going into the woods with your basic ingredients, to forage for the extra bits to make the dessert pop? You don’t need frozen ingredients for the maker, so it’s more convenient, right?

Throw in your brightly coloured and not at all suspicious berries from a bush you saw while trekking!

KRUSH from Cocinare comes with an app (what doesn’t these days?) which has lots of recipes for you to try, and you can share your findings with your adventurous friends.