Moxi the ‘friendly’ hospital robot wants to help nurses, not replace them

With so many countries around the world struggling to recruit people for the healthcare sector, robots could one day provide a realistic solution to help ease the growing strain placed on existing workers.

While robotic technology is already helping some surgeons perform precision surgery, robots that can assist nurses and other personnel in their daily tasks are yet to make an impact.

In an effort to improve the situation for overburdened healthcare workers, Diligent Robotics has created Moxi, described as a socially intelligent robot capable of supporting clinical staff to become a vital and trusted member of the team.

Unlike, say, Robear — a Japanese-made healthcare robot capable of lifting people in and out of a bed — Moxi isn’t built for patient interaction. Instead, it’s designed to carry out a range of logistical tasks for nurses, giving them more time for interaction with patients.

Previous

Next

1 of 3

Diligent Robotics

Diligent Robotics

Diligent Robotics

Moxi, which was unveiled this week by the Austin, Texas-based tech company, incorporates artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology that helps it map and learn about its environment. It moves along on a set of wheels, and uses sensors to help it avoid obstacles, whether moving or stationary. An arm and a sophisticated gripper allow it to perform tasks such as selecting medical items from storage that can be placed in an attached tray and then delivered to locations throughout the facility. Moxi also includes a screen that can display information related to the tasks that it’s carrying out.

Given that Moxi is designed to work in a potentially high-stress environment, its creators were keen to give the autonomous robot a congenial and cooperative personality. Diligent Robotics describes Moxi as “approachable and friendly,” and it certainly seems that way with its cute LED-lit face and soft voice.

“Clinical staff balance patient care with massive loads of manual logistical responsibilities, such as fetching and restocking supplies or setting up patient rooms for new admissions,” Diligent Robotics says on its website. “With an extra hand from Moxi, who autonomously completes those manual logistical tasks end-to-end without assistance, clinical staff focus on what they want to do and what they, as caring human beings, are best at — direct patient care.”

Indeed, with much talk these days about how robots are taking the place of human workers, Diligent Robotics is keen to point out that Moxi is designed to support staff rather than replace them.

Moxi will be put to work in a number of trials beginning this week at Texas Health Dallas, The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health), and Houston Methodist Hospital. The tests will give the team the chance to see Moxi in a real-world environment, enabling it to pinpoint ways to improve the design. Possible challenges could include Moxi’s ability to perform tasks in a timely manner compared to humans, and the degree to which having only wheels to move around prevent it from reaching various parts of a facility.

Still, it’s fascinating to see the first iteration of Moxi, a robot that could be helping out at a hospital near you in the not-too-distant future.

Editors’ Recommendations

• This myth-inspired, karate-chopping centaur robot could save your life one day
• It’s curtains for Kuri: Work ceased on robot companion project
• Processed pies: Silicon Valley’s Zume Pizza ready to offer you dinner made by a robot
• Robots can peer pressure kids, but don’t think for a second that we’re immune
• The best robot vacuums of 2018

How to sync your fitness band to Google Fit

Google Fit is perfect for staying on top of your fitness goals, but it can be cumbersome to always have your phone with you while on a run. Thankfully, it’s easy to get Google Fit data straight from your fitness band. Here’s how to sync your fitness band to Google Fit!

Products used in this guide

• Any Android smartphone
• Google Play Store: Google Fit (Free)
• Amazon: TicWatch Pro ($250)
• Google Play Store: Mi Fit (Free)
• Amazon: Xiaomi Mi Band 3 ($40)

How to sync your Wear OS watch to Google Fit

If you’re already using a Wear OS watch, it’s super easy to get Google Fit on your watch.

Download Google Fit from the Google Play Store to the watch.
Open Google Fit on your watch.
Complete the initial setup.

That’s it! Now your watch can be used to collect your fitness data, and it will be automatically synced to Google Fit.

How to sync your Xiaomi Mi Band to Google Fit

Xiaomi makes some pretty great fitness bands, and they work perfectly with Google Fit. Getting things set up is a breeze.

Open the Mi Fit application.
Go to the Profile tab.

Scroll down and select Add accounts.

Select Google Fit from the list.
Tap the Add Google Fit button.

Sign into the appropriate Google account.

Tap Allow.

That’s it! Now Google Fit can get your heart rate and other data from your Mi Band.

Our top equipment picks

If you’re all in on Google Fit, it’s worth getting a Wear OS watch to track your workouts right from your wrist.

The best watch for Google Fit

Mobvoi TicWatch Pro

$250 at Amazon

The best Wear OS watch is also the best for tracking your workouts.

The Ticwatch Pro features a GPS tracker, heart-rate monitor, and NFC payments.

The Ticwatch Pro is a genuinely good watch even if you don’t care about fitness tracking. If you do, it’s even better. There’s a GPS chip to better track your jogs, a heart-rate monitor for keeping your beats in check, and an NFC chip so you can leave your phone at home and still use Google Pay.

UK Deal: Save £30 on AncestyDNA’s genetic testing kit today only

For under £60, you can pick up this test kit and uncover a wealth of information regarding your ancestry.

AncestryDNA’s genetic testing kit is a fantastic way to learn more about your family and where you come from, and it’s currently on sale with a £30 discount at Amazon today only. The kit regularly sells for £89 when it’s not discounted, which is still really a worthwhile fee when you consider what the service is offering, and today’s deal represents a new all-time low price.

This genetic testing kit uses your saliva to collect and analyze your DNA. After you send in your sample, the AncestryDNA lab will analyse it and uncover your ethnic mix. It’s based on a DNA network that is six million strong and growing and covers more than 165 regions worldwide. This is one of the more popular testing kits out there and has an average review rating of 4 stars.

For more UK deals coverage, be sure to keep an eye on Thrifter UK and follow the team on Twitter.

See at Amazon UK

Don’t be fooled — this automated system sneakily manipulates video content

A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an artificial intelligence system that automatically transfers content from one film into the style of another. In the vein of “deep fakes”, the A.I.-augmented videos infamous for superimposing one person’s face onto another’s body, the CMU system presents another case for how difficult it could be to distinguish fiction from reality in the future.

The CMU researches have named their system Recycle-GAN, after a class of algorithms that help make deep fakes possible by applying the style of one image or video to another.

In a video released early this month, the researchers demonstrated how a source video of Barack Obama speaking can be processed to make it seem as though Donald Trump is mouthing the word. Or a monologue from John Oliver can be transformed into one from Stephen Colbert. Recycle-GAN isn’t limited to human faces either. The researchers also show how the system can make a daffodil bloom with the same mechanics as a hibiscus.

The end result isn’t perfect — a slew of digital artifacts around the edges of the edited faces make it clear that things aren’t exactly as they seem. Still, it’s pretty impressive.

“Recycle-GAN encodes both spatial and temporal information,” Aayush Bansal, a CMU Ph.D. student who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “Spatial constraints enable it to learn transformation from one domain to another, and the temporal information helps in better learning stylistic information and improve the spatial transformation.”

Bansal said he was motivated to develop Recycle-GAN by an urge to, in a sense, resurrect the dead. “One of my life goals is to bring back … Charlie Chaplin in our movies,” he said. As such, Bansal sees the system as a tool for artists, such as moviemakers, and data-hungry researchers.

Bansal acknowledged that bad actors could exploit a tool like Recycle-GAN to perform troubling manipulations similar to those we’ve seen with deep fakes, including fake news videos and fake porn. However, he hopes his team’s approach could provide a solution for identifying deep fakes rather than fuel to the fire.

“Our approach enables generation of data which could be used to train a simple machine learning model that can discriminate between real and fake,” he said. “Generating this fake data was hard earlier because most deep fakes out there require human intervention or manual supervision, and as such we could never get an automatic way to detect them. However, now we have an automatic way to generate such data that we can train models that could detect fake content with some reliable accuracy.”

Bansal presented his team’s work at the European Conference on Computer Vision in Germany earlier this month.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Current tech for detecting hate speech is woefully inadequate, researchers find
• MIT researchers develop a robot system controlled by brainwaves
• Artificial intelligence discovers dozens of mysterious cosmic signals
• Like a vice principal in the sky, this A.I. spots fights before they happen
• The best movies on Netflix right now (September 2018)

Amazfit Bip review: A $79 smartwatch that does it all

Look no further if you’re in the market for an affordable smartwatch.

The smartwatch segment is in continual decline, and although Qualcomm announced the Wear 3100 platform, we haven’t seen mainstream brands like Motorola or LG launch devices powered by the chipset yet. Wear OS in general is looking more and more like it is about to fade away into irrelevance, but it’s not the only option available if you’re in the market for a wearable.

Fitbit makes a range of fitness trackers and smartwatches that do a decent job of mirroring notifications to your wrist, and in recent years Xiaomi has gained a lot of momentum in this segment thanks to the affordable Mi Band. The Mi Band is currently in its third generation, and it’s safe to say that the fitness tracker is one of the best value-for-money wearables you can buy today.

For $30, the Mi Band 3 offers an OLED panel, heart rate monitor, automatic activity tracking, and two-week battery life. The fitness band is manufactured by Huami, which is the same company that makes Amazfit smartwatches. That’s what makes the Amazfit Bip such an exciting product: it carries Xiaomi’s ethos while delivering a new set of experiences.

The 2018 Pebble

Amazfit Bip

$79 at Amazon

The best smartwatch you can get under $100.

The Amazfit Bip does everything you’d expect from a smartwatch but at a much lower price point. If you’ve used a Pebble in the past and were looking for a device that offers a similar set of features and weeks-long battery life, the Bip is a great alternative.

Pros:

• Great value for money
• Sunlight legibility is good
• Comfortable fit
• Excellent battery life

Cons:

• Non-actionable notifications
• Doesn’t track all workouts

Amazfit started out three years ago as Huami sought to branch out into the smartwatch segment, and is headquartered in Mountain View. Its products are available officially on Amazon in the U.S. as well as a host of other markets, and like Xiaomi’s wearables, the trait that makes Amazfit’s smartwatches stand out is affordability.

Coming to the watch itself, the Amazfit Bip is made out of polycarbonate with a 2.5D curved display backed by a layer of Gorilla Glass 3. You get a soft rubber removable strap in the box, allowing you to switch out the default band for more colorful options (it uses standard 20mm lugs). The 1.28-inch display has a resolution of 176 x 176, and you also get a heart rate sensor, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, built-in GPS, IP68 dust and water resistance, and incredible 30-day battery life.

The design of the Bip is very similar to that of Pebble, but where Amazfit wins out is in delivering value. Retailing for just $79, the Bip doesn’t have a whole lot of competition. The watch itself is very lightweight at 32g, and it doesn’t feel uncomfortable to wear throughout the day.

The Amazfit Bip is the spiritual successor to the Pebble.

The best part about the Bip is that it connects to Xiaomi’s Mi Fit app for notification syncing and tracking your daily activity. The Bip does a great job mirroring content to your wrist, but unlike Wear OS, the notifications aren’t actionable. The Bip doesn’t offer much in the way of third-party app support, but you do get the option to choose from various watch faces from within Mi Fit.

The built-in GPS allows the Bip to accurately map activities like walking, cycling, or running, but you have to manually enable the workout from the watch itself. There’s also no option to track swimming although it has an IP68 rating. On the plus side, you get a heart rate sensor and sleep tracking.

What sets the Bip apart from other smartwatches is the battery life. Amazfit quotes a 30-day battery life between charges, and that holds up in real-world usage. I’ve only had to charge the smartwatch once in over a month’s worth of constant use, and while the display isn’t as vibrant as what you get on Wear OS smartwatches, it is easily legible under harsh sunlight.

It’s not difficult to get your hands on the Bip as the smartwatch is officially available in the U.S., UK, and India. The Bip is available for $79 in the U.S., and you’ll have to shell out £64.99 ($85) to pick it up in the UK. The Indian version costs slightly more at ₹9,699 ($135).

4.5
out of 5

If you’re looking for an easy way to mirror notifications and calls from your phone onto your wrist, the Bip is the ideal smartwatch for the job. The amazing battery life alone justifies the cost, and you get an array of features that includes a heart rate sensor, IP68 rating, and GPS connectivity.

See at Amazon US See at Amazon UK See at Amazon India

How to turn off Snapchat’s location-based Snap Map

Snapchat’s Snap Map, which allows users to access public posts associated with specific locations, was met with understandable criticism when it first rolled out in 2017. Although the feature was originally marketed as a way to see posts uploaded to Our Story — something that proved useful in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey — the fact that the app was sharing your location whenever you opened it was kind of swept under the rug.

Further reading

How to use Snapchat

Seven hidden Snapchat features for chatting with friends

Besides the obvious dangers this feature could pose for younger users or those unfamiliar with the capabilities of location-sharing, who really wants their friends (or parents for that matter) knowing where they are at all times? Many users likely enabled the feature when posting to Our Story for the first time, without realizing exactly how much access they were giving the app. Thankfully, we’ve outlined how to disable the Snap Map below, as well as ways to limit who can see your location if you wish to keep it enabled.

How does Snap Map work exactly?

If you’ve enabled the feature, your location will be updated on the Snap Map whenever you open Snapchat. Precise location data will only be displayed for a short period of time, but general location data may be retained for longer (although it’s unclear exactly how long these periods are). If you tap on a friend’s Bitmoji on the map, you’ll see when their location was last updated. This also reflects the last time they opened the app, and they can do the same for you. Locations will remain on the map for up to eight hours, assuming you don’t open the app again during that time period. If more than eight hours have passed since you last opened the app, your location will disappear from the map until the next time you do.

You can also tap hotspots, colorful points on the map that indicate activity, to see the public posts in that area. You can zoom in and out of the map, too, like you would with any dedicated navigation app. You may also see sponsored events or newsworthy stories with a short description next to them, which you can click to access associated Snaps.

Enabling Ghost Mode

If you don’t like the idea of your friends knowing exactly where you are at all times (and who would?), you can enable Ghost mode, which will prevent your location from being updated on the map. You can still post to Our Story with Ghost Mode enabled, but it will give you the peace of mind that no one is following your every move. Here’s how:

Step 1: Open Snapchat

First, launch the Snapchat app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. If you’re not already logged in, enter your email and password before opening the camera portion of the app.

Step 2: Find the Snap Map

Using two fingers, pinch in toward the center of your screen to access the Snap Map.

Step 3: Open settings and toggle Ghost Mode on

To access your Settings, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of your screen. Afterward, toggle the slide beside Ghost Mode, which should be the first item in the resulting list.

With Ghost Mode enabled, your friends won’t be able to see your location on the map. You will still be able to see your own avatar, but it will be holding a blue Snapchat logo in front of its face to indicate that other users can’t see it. Keep in mind that you can turn Ghost Mode off at any time by following the same steps.

Editing your privacy settings

If you’re comfortable periodically sharing your location, you can still limit the people who have access to your data. Under Ghost Mode in your Settings is a section titled Who Can See My Location. Whichever option has a blue check mark next to it, is the option you currently have selected. My Friends refers to all the users you’ve added on Snapchat who have also added you back. My Friends, Except allows you to select certain friends you wish to hide your location from, and Only These Friends lets you select the mutual friends who will have access to your location data.

Pick whichever option you’re more comfortable with, or follow the steps above to prevent your location from being shared altogether.

Editors’ Recommendations

• New to Snapchat? Follow our guide and go from newbie to pro
• Here’s how — and why — to use Safe mode with an Android phone
• How to use Android 9.0 Pie’s gesture navigation, and how to turn it off
• No mo’ FOMO — Here’s how to delete your Snapchat account
• Tinder testing Bitmoji feature using Snap Kit

Who needs Stitch Fix? Maison Me uses A.I. to custom design clothing just for you

After the dramatic success of boutique fashion boxes and personal shopping services like Stitch Fix, the fashion industry seems poised to kick things up a notch with custom-designed, sewn-on-demand clothing.

The latest company to enter the market in a big way is Maison Me, a new custom-design firm that has emerged organically from — or perhaps counterintuitively — Silicon Valley technology. It’s hard to square up high fashion with engineers and algorithms, but that’s exactly what happened for Anastasia Sartan, a serial entrepreneur who has grown her success with a personal stylist chatbot into a multi-million-dollar enterprise.

Here’s how it works: The process starts when a customer signs on and starts engaging with a form driven by Epytom Stylist, the aforementioned chatbot and personal recommendation platform developed by Sartan and her team in 2016. The chatbot processes their desires, demographics, and tastes, then crunches the data through its proprietary recommendation algorithm, and kicks recommendations over to a human designer, who creates a custom sketch of the proposed apparel for the customer.

Once the client has their custom sketch in hand, they can approve the sketch, request changes, tweak some details, or request a whole new design. All of this costs just one flat fee of $15, which is applied toward the final price of the item.

When the customer is satisfied with the design, Maison Me initiates a video call, where a professional tailor takes the customer’s measurements. The tailors go to work, the clothing is produced in Maison Me’s manufacturing facility in Arizona, and the sartorial item is promptly shipped off to the customer in about two weeks.

The price range for custom-designed clothing can vary widely depending on fabrics and the complexity of the design, but Maison Me says most unique tailored pieces cost between $150 and $250. It’s a pretty good bargain given that brand-name dresses in standard retail outlets can run north of $500. Oh, and if you don’t like it, Maison Me will do your alterations for free, including free shipping both ways.

As for the backing for this artificial intelligence (A.I.)-based operation, Maison Me just got a big boost from a $1 million seed round that included support from Founders Fund, Gagarin Capital, and the much-lauded Google Assistant Investment Program.

“A lot of people start their daily routines asking their Google Home speakers for a weather forecast, looking for some help before they pick out their outfits for the day,” Ilya Gelfenberyn, head of the Google Assistant investment program, said in a statement. “Smart Displays with the Google Assistant make it possible to build services and recommendations in such a visual industry like fashion, and we believe that personalized what-to-wear recommendations can really simplify the morning routines for people.”

These changes in how people buy and accessorize clothing could become part of a tectonic shift in the fashion industry that includes innovations like Amazon’s computer vision-enabled Echo Look device and the advent of improved technologies like smart mirrors.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best Google Home tips and tricks
• ‘Can I book a table for Thursday?’ Google Duplex duped me, but I didn’t mind
• Replaced by robots: 10 jobs that could be hit hard by the A.I. revolution
• Alexa makes for a good shopping buddy but Google Assistant may ‘get you’ better
• Look at them go! Check out the best Rube Goldberg Machines on the internet

New monitors from Philips are sleek, color-accurate, cost less than $200

Previous

Next

1 of 5

If you’re a creative who wants a solid, color-accurate monitor that won’t cost a fortune, Phillips’ new 2018 E-Series look like an intriguing option. The new line of monitors offers ultra-narrow bezels with IPS panels that features realistic color reproduction great for color sensitive work such as photography or videography. Offered in three different sizes — 22-inch, 24-inch, and 27-inch — the new lineup starts at only $110 and is available on NewEgg starting today, September 18.

Phillips new offerings prove that smartphones and laptops aren’t the only devices with shrinking bezels. Offering ultrathin bezels on a desktop monitor isn’t just a grab for style points either; thinner bezels are a great way to create a more seamless multi-monitor setup without large vertical borders getting in the way.

With what it calls “Ultra Wide-Color” IPS LED panels, Phillips’ new monitors claim to deliver crisp, bright, color accurate high-definition imagery with a color gamut that covers 129-percent of the sRGB color space. All three displays — 22-inch ($110), 24-inch ($140), and 27-inch ($180) — offer Full HD resolutions of 1920 x 1080 with the ability to display 16.7 million colors with 250 nits of brightness. That’s not the brightest monitor we’ve ever seen, but for this price, it’s not bad.

The displays themselves also feature an anti-glare coating to keep reflections from getting in between you and your work. The IPS display also mean that you’ll be able to view the monitor from angles of up to 178-degrees without anything distorting.

Gamers might also find something to love about Phillips’ new E-Series of monitors. Although the panels all cap out at a 60Hz refresh rate, the E-Series does have some features for gamers, including built-in AMD FreeSync technology to prevent screen tearing issues at high framerates. Additionally, due to Phillips’ proprietary FlickerFree technology, the company promises a viewing experience with reduced flicker and more comfortable viewing, which means a bit fewer headaches during your intense gaming sessions.

Other included features for the E-Series lineup of monitors from Phillips include LowBlue light modes for reduced eyestrain, an EnergyStar 7.0 rating for reduced power consumption, and a wide array of connectivity ports include VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. Phillips is hoping you love black and silver, as the E-Series monitors are only available in the one color combo.

Editors’ Recommendations

• AOC makes curved gaming displays more affordable with G1 series
• Computer monitor buying guide
• Acer targets gamers with new color-rich 4K Predator and Nitro monitors
• Dell P2715Q review
• Dell’s new fast-refresh Freesync display could be your next great gaming screen

Swiss researcher offers blueprints for animal-friendly autonomous machines

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” By that metric, America (and every other nation that gorges itself on factory-farmed livestock) has some ethical issues to address.

For Oliver Bendel, a researcher at FHNW University in Switzerland, the issue isn’t strictly with our industrial agricultural techniques. Bendel worries that the high-tech future we’re developing fails to consider the well-being of Earth’s other creatures. Specifically, he thinks we should be developing animal-friendly autonomous machines.

“Machine ethics is a young discipline, 10 to 20 years old,” Bendel told Digital Trends. “It deals with machine morality or with moral machines. Machine ethics has so far concentrated almost exclusively on automatic actions that affect people. The moral machines I design also take animals into account.”

In a paper published last month in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, Bendel lays out a few ideas for how autonomous machines might be developed to respect the animals around them. Bendel suggests using “annotated decision trees,” in which the machine’s actions are clearly described, along with annotations that provide moral guidelines. “With [annotated decision trees] one can make moral assumptions and justifications explicit and make them the framework of the machines,” he said.

Among Bendel’s animal-friendly autonomous machine ideas, he proposes wind turbines that exhibit themselves when birds approach, robotic vacuum cleaners that avoid ladybugs, and farm equipment that steers around baby deer hidden among crops. “Cars that brake for toads and hedgehogs would be important to me,” he added.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, researchers use a platform called Moral Machine to crowdsource moral judgements that could someday help self-driving cars make split-second decisions. But the scenarios in Moral Machine are almost exclusively concerned with human well-being. As autonomous machines become more commonplace, Bendel thinks it’s essential that we develop a framework that takes animals into account as well.

“In the future, more and more robots and devices will encounter animals, pets as well as farm animals and wild animals,” he said. “Robots like Nao, Pepper, Paro, iPal, and K5 appear everywhere in households, nursing homes, retirement homes, and shopping malls. They are primarily oriented towards people. That must change. Because in fact they also encounter animals, frighten them, disturb them, injure them. At the moment, we are anthropocentric in robot construction.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• CanguRo robot is part transport, part best friend
• Tannenbaum in a box? You can order a real, 7-foot-tall Christmas tree from Amazon
• Spirit animals: 9 revolutionary robots inspired by real-world creatures
• The best PlayStation 4 exclusives (September 2018)
• Look out, bartenders: This cocktail-making robot is coming for your job

The Flamethrower Diet is better than keto and I burned all this food to prove it

Like most people, I’ve tried (and failed) at a bunch of different diets. I’ve done everything from Weight Watchers to the Ketogenic diet, and while they’ve all helped me shed a few pounds in the short term, I’ve never managed to stick with any of them. More often than not, the diet du-jour ends up being a temporary change that only lasts a few months, rather than becoming a permanent part of my lifestyle. But when I completely made up heard about the new Flamethrower Diet that’s been taking the world by storm, I knew I had found something special.

For those of you who aren’t hip and in-the-know, the Flamethrower Diet is the hottest new nutrition trend from Silicon Valley. Rather than forcing you to cut carbs or count calories, this diet gives you the freedom and flexibility to eat whatever you want, whenever you want — as long as it can be cooked with The Boring Company’s new Not-A-Flamethrower.

Sounds crazy, right? I know — I was skeptical at first too, but after you read into it a bit, you’ll realize the logic behind this diet is bulletproof. Think about it: Our ancestors cooked all their food over open flames, right? And do you know how many obese cavemen there were? Do you know how many Paeleolithic-era hominids were diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or non-celiac gluten intolerance? None! Not a single one!

Previous

Next

1 of 11

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

The only logical conclusion to draw from these facts is that the secret to a long, healthy life is cooking everything over an open flame. And what better way to mimic the culinary practices of our ancestors than with a gas-powered, shoulder-fired flamethrower from Elon Musk?!

What follows is an honest account of my first day on the Flamethrower Diet. My hope is that by sharing my journey with the world, it’ll encourage more people to try #TFD for themselves. You won’t regret it!

Levy Moroshan for Digital Trends

Breakfast

Instead of my usual breakfast (a handful of Reese’s Pieces, a swig of Gatorade, and two Marlboro Reds), I decided to go the healthy route and make myself a cup of tea and a piece of whole-wheat toast — both of which would be prepared using my brand-spanking-new Boring Company Not-A-Flamethrower, naturally.

Almost immediately, the benefits of cooking via flamethrower became apparent to me. The time savings alone make this diet worth a try. My toast was finished in seconds, and instead of fiddling with a tea kettle like some sort of chump, my shoulder-fired searing machine allowed me to heat up my tea directly in the cup. Talk about efficiency!

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Nevermind the fact that my tea was only lukewarm, that the tea bag string was burned into oblivion, or that I could taste propane in every sip. I could care less if drinking trace amounts of natural gas every day might eventually give me cancer. The way I see it, that’s a small price to pay for not having to count calories or wait for a kettle to heat up. This flamethrower diet is perfect for folks like me who have a busy lifestyle.

Lunch

For my midday meal, I decided to mix things up with some German-style bratwurst and a side of elote — also known as Mexican street corn. This meal turned out better than I ever could’ve imagined. The flamethrower provided a nice charred flavor, similar to what you’d get from cooking over a campfire or a grill, which was absolutely fantastic. After the first bite, I was ready to rip my range out of the wall and set it aflame with my next meal. Seriously, who needs a bunch of bulky appliances when a $500 flamethrower can get the same job done?

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Unfortunately, right when I was really starting to feel good about this new diet and excitedly cooking up a second batch of bratwurst, my nosy neighbor started yelling “ARE YOU INSANE?! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” from her porch. Normally I would’ve been discouraged by this, but past experience has taught me that you need to stay strong and can’t let the haters get you down. So instead of internalizing the discouragement, I let her know that she wasn’t getting to me by shouting: “YES I CAN! I BELIEVE IN MYSELF, KAREN! I WILL STICK TO THIS DIET AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME!!!”

Dinner

To round out the day, I decided to cook up a nice, lean sockeye salmon fillet with a side of roasted asparagus. I flame-blasted the salmon on a alder plank in an effort to impart the fish with some woody smoke flavors, and also to keep from scorching the pavement in my driveway too much. As for the asparagus, I tossed it in a bit of olive oil, seasoned it with some garlic, truffle salt, and a dash of lemon zest — and then lit that shit up like the Fourth of July.

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but this meal was easily the best of the bunch. It absolutely brought the house down. Not literally, but close! It must’ve smelled amazing because, within minutes, I had a whole squadron of hungry men in my driveway, asking all kinds of questions about the delicious meal I had just prepared.

I’ve never seen anything like it. There were cops and firemen shouting excitedly at me and causing a ruckus. “What are you doing?! they screamed. “Where’d you get that flamethrower!? Are you out of your goddamn mind!?” I could hardly get a word in edgewise!

After the shouting died down a bit, one of the police officers stepped forward and politely offered me a ride in his cruiser. How could I say no!? I’ve always wanted to be a cop, so this was like a dream come true. All I had to do was let him borrow my flamethrower until we got to the station.

Real nice guy, that cop. I think we really hit it off. Next week I get to meet his friend who’s a judge!

Editors’ Recommendations

• GE JES1097SMSS microwave review
• The Brava Oven uses light – and seemingly magic – to cook. It changes everything.
• Automated gardens and smart beds made my apartment every geek’s domestic dream
• 8K is the next big thing in TVs. Get over it
• Silverware handles up or down? Dishwasher experts settle it once and for all