The FlashTorch Mini flashlight is about as close as you can get to a real-life, commercially-available lightsaber. Its 2300-lumens halogen light output is enough to start a fire or cook an egg.

Created by Wicked Laser, the FlashTorch Mini is made of anodized, machined aircraft-grade aluminum and features a highly efficient, heat-resistant lens and reflector. That already sounds very impressive, but it’s the intense light this thing emits that really makes it special. The ‘torch’ in its name has a very literal meaning, as the 2300 lumens output is more than enough to start a fire if you hold the flashlight close enough to something flammable. It’s also strong enough to melt plastic and even cook eggs, if you balance the cooking container on top of the flashlight.

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The aptly-named SkunkLock is an ingenious bicycle lock that blasts would-be thieves with a disgusting cocktails of chemicals that most of the time causes them to vomit uncontrollably.

When San Francisco-based Daniel Idzkowski learned that over 1.5 million bikes are being stolen across the United States, every year, he decided it was up to him to come up with a more efficient means of theft prevention. After six months of work, he came up with the SkunkLock, a hollow steel U-lock system which houses presurized noxious chemical deterrent that’s even detectable through some of the most advanced gas masks. The proprietary formula, known as D_1, was developed by Idzkowski and his partner Yves Perrenoud, and is perfectly legal.

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Believe it or not, the best answer to your dog’s shedding problem may be a pair of skin-tight leotards. Reminiscent of 1980’s aerobic outfits, the Shed-Defender is a canine leotard that is supposed to keep falling hairs from covering your entire home.

Tyson Walters, founder of Shed Defender, recently revealed  that he came up the idea for the funny-looking leotard after failing to find an effective solution to his own dog’s shedding issue. “I had this huge Saint Bernard, called Harley, and I just couldn’t control her shedding,” he said. No matter how much I brushed and groomed her, she still left tumbleweeds of hair everywhere. I looked around on the internet and dog stores and I couldn’t find a solution to my product, so I decided to make one.”

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Cycling enthusiasts in Lidzbark Warminski, a small town in Northern Poland, have recently received a unique, awesome present from the local authorities – a brand new sun-powered bicycle path that glows bright blue all night long.

Scientists at Polish construction company TPA Instytut Badan Technicznych in Pruszkow created the innovative 100-meter bicycle path using luminophores, a synthetic material that lights up when charged with sunlight. According to TPA president Igor Ruttmar, “The material we used for the track gives light for over ten hours. That means the road can radiate throughout the whole night and reaccumulate light the following day”. Apparently, the new material can emit light in a variety of colors, but designers chose blue because it went well with the surroundings in Lidzbark Warminski.

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Twelve South, an American company that specializes in Apple product accessories, recently launched a scented candle that it claims captures the specific smell of a newly-opened Apple computer.

Called “New Mac”, the unique scented candle has notes of mint, peach, basil, lavender, mandarin and sage, which combined closely mimic the smell of a fresh new Apple product. It is made entirely of soy wax “hand poured” in South Carolina, where Twelve South is based. New Mac will burn for 45-55 hours, constantly filling the room with its special scent, which the company claims is longer than the small of an actual new Mac lasts. And, best of all, you can simply pay $24 for a new one, instead of hundreds or thousands of dollars for a new Apple computer.

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The Elysium chair relies on a carbon-fiber skeleton and a combination of electronic joints and bearings to create a sensation of weightlessness for the person sitting in it. This marvel of engineering is being hailed as the ultimate office chair, but it also comes with a hefty price tag of $26,000. Bearing the price tag of a decent car, the Elysium chair seems like the mother of all gimmicks, but if it actually works as described in a recently released promotional video and you really value comfort I’d say it might actually be worth it.

Elysium is the creation of Dr. David Wicket, a British inventor and furniture designer who also carries a PhD in bioengineering. During 10 years of research, he was able to develop an equation that defines posture and gravitational force, which later became the backbone of this innovative chair. According to the chair’s official website, there is a spot between lying and sitting up when your weight is evenly distributed and your body passes through zero gravity. “This results in sensory attenuation which is the principle of flotation therapy,” the website claims, which means it is the most comfortable point and puts the least strain on your back.

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Lucid Dreamer is an ingenious device programmed to detect REM sleep, the time when people dream more vividly, and emit low electrical impulses to help you realize that you are dreaming, allowing you to take control of your dreams and go on lucid adventures.

Lucid dreams are dreams in which you realize that you are dreaming, but while 20% of the population experience lucid dreams every month, these are usually happen accidentally. However, recent research has shown that a specific brain activity, known as “gamma activity” is associated with lucid dreaming, and that gama activity can be enhanced with the use of Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS), a form of mild electrical stimulation of the brain. During a study in which tACS was used to enhance gamma activity during REM sleep, lucidity was achieved in 77% of dreams.

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Until recently, having an alcohol-free night at the local bar left you with only a few bland options – water, a sweetened soft drink or a non-alcoholic cocktail. But that was before someone had the brilliant idea to create Seedlip, the world’s first alcohol-free spirit.

Ben Branson, the mastermind behind Seedlip, claims he came up with the formula for his unique spirit while reading John French’s 1651 book, “The Art of Distillation.” In it he found a large number of remedies for various ailments, and while some included alcohol, a lot of them didn’t. “It’s easy to forget that alcohol had its origins in medicine. That quickly moved to drinking for pleasure, and it seems we forgot about the non-alcoholic side,” Seedlip Ben (the name he usually goes by) says. “I’m not a distiller and I’m not scientific, but I thought that was interesting. So I bought a little still and starting playing around in my kitchen.”

Using various herbs he was growing in his backyard, a copper still, water and steam, Ben started experimenting, and eventually realized he could make a liquid that smelled and tasted like whatever plant he put in the still. He calls it his “eureka” moment because it got him wondering if he could make a drink like this and, if anyone else had done it before. It turns out they hadn’t, at least not commercially, so he ended up marketing his final formula for Seedlip as the world’s first non-alcoholic spirit.

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Thirty-some years after making their debut as cartoon characters, vehicle-morphing Transformers have finally become a reality, thanks to the efforts of a Turkish company out of Ankara.

The R&D-focused company, called Letvision, recently wowed the internet with a presentation video for their prototype car-transforming robot, ANTIMON. The recently-released footage shows a red BMW M3 being unveiled and remotely driven toward the camera, where it proceeds to transform into a mighty Autobot-like robot. The whole process takes a bit longer than in Michael Bay’s CGI movies, but it’s still mesmerizing to watch.

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While millions of people around the world eagerly awaited the release of Apples’s new iPhone 7, dozens of attendants at the Fireside Gathering – a no-phone, no-reception event held at a summer camp two hours west of Ottawa – had to make due with a “revolutionary NoPhone Air, a simple phone package with nothing but air inside.

“We are very proud to introduce the least-advanced NoPhone ever,” inventors Chris Sheldon and Van Gould told Fireside Gathering attendees on September 10th. “We took away the headphone jack. And then we took away everything else. It may look like nothing is in this packaging. But that’s what’s so beautiful about it.”

Sheldon and Gould are part of a growing smartphone-resistant counterculture, and claim they came up with the idea for the NoPhone after seeing everyone at a rooftop bar in New York with their eyes glued to their smartphones. “The NoPhone was created to combat the rapid decline of real life social engagement that has stemmed from chronic smartphone use. It’s sleek, plastic design serves as an idle hand’s security blanket and is devised to alleviate the constant need humans have to hold a mobile device without preventing users from fully experiencing their immediate surroundings,” they wrote on the NoPhone official site.

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From now on, when you get the munchies for a delicious street food snack, you’ll no longer have to choose between a hamburger and a hotdog, because you can have both in the same bun. Introducing the Hamdog, probably the craziest fast food hybrid ever.

Mark Murray, of Perth, Australia, came up with the idea for the Hamdog in 2004, and by 2009, he had already obtained a patent for the uniquely-shaped bun of the treat. Last year, he appeared on Channel 10’s Shark Tank show to pitch his idea to potential investors and secure enough funding to get his fast food business off the ground. The judges were not impressed, and even laughed when he described eating the Hamdog as “a party in your mouth”. But Murray didn’t let the experience bring him down, and one year later, he’s selling Hamdogs in his home city and wants to expand nationally.

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Smartphone addiction is a growing problem that often interferes with our personal and professional lives. DistractaGone is an ingenious solution that allows you to lock up your phone in a box that only opens after a set period of time, offering you a period without constant distraction.

Trying to get some work done, enjoying dinner conversation or even watching a movie can be pretty tough with your phone serving up distractions in the form of various notifications, but even if you’re the kind of person who just can’t stop checking their handheld every few minutes, there is still hope. Introducing DistractaGone, a smart box that locks up to four phones at a time and keeps them inside for as long as you decide.

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Egloo is a clever little terracotta heater that harnesses the power of tealights to heat spaces up to 20 square feet for as little as 10 cents a day, without using any electricity.

Developed by Marco Zagaria, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Egloo is both cheap to use and eco-friendly. Made up of two small terracotta domes and a metal tray, the device takes advantage of the natural heating ability of these materials, drawing heat from just four tealights placed inside it and releasing it in your living space. As the candles burn inside, the distinct dome shape of the innovative heater allows it to gradually heat up and radiate the heat, while the small hole on top keeps combustion going and and also releases some of the heat, allowing it to spread throughout the room.

“Egloo is conceived for contrasting continuous waste of electricity used for warming domestic rooms, offering, as an option, a candle-powered way that provides a cheaper and more ecological energy,” the product’s website states. “It takes advantage of features of terracotta that stores the heat and slowly and gradually releases it by radiation, even after it blows out.”

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Signl is an innovative gadget that allows users to take phone calls by simply touching their ear with their fingertip. It then transmits the sound through the body, essentially turning their hand into a phone.

Signl, formerly “TipTalk”, was developed by South Korean company Innomdle Lab, a new startup founded in 2015 by three ex-Samsung employees. It’s a smart strap that can be worn by itself, with a classic watch or any kind of smartwatch ((Apple, Samsung, Pebble, etc.). It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and thanks to a built-in “body conduction unit”, the strap sends sound through your body, allowing you to hear the caller just by touching your ear with a finger. A microphone of the strap lets you have a conversation just like you would on a mobile phone.

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The USB Killer is a commercially available USB stick that can fry almost any computer in seconds by rapidly collecting power from the USB power lines and then repeatedly discharging 240V into the host device until it dies. The whole process only takes a few seconds.

USB sticks have long been used infect unsuspecting users’ computers with all kinds of malware and spyware, but last year, a Russian hacker by the name of Dark Purple showed the entire world a new way USB drives can be used to effectively destroy virtually any PC or laptop equipped with a USB port. When it was first revealed, last year, the “USB Killer” was described as a proof of concept aimed at security researchers and folks who work on USB standards, to help them make devices immune to high voltage attacks. A few days ago, however, the USB Killer became a commercially available product that anyone can order online for just $56.

The USB Killer looks as harmless as any other pen drive, but it’s actually lethal for around 95% of consumer laptops and PCs. It is equipped with small capacitors that draw power from the USB power source to which it is connected, and when they are completely charged – it can take less than a second – the stick discharges over 200 volts of DC power to the host device multiple times per seconds until the machine is fried or the USB Killer is unplugged.

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