33-year old biohacker Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow (which is coincidentally what I call my cat) was recently charged $220 by transportation authorities in Sydney, Australia for implanting the chip from an Opal metro card in his arm and “using public transport without a valid ticket and for not producing a ticket to transport officers.”
It was a brilliant plan. Plus he was on his way to becoming the ultimate cyborg. Sadly, it just didn’t work out and he got caught. His lawyer argued that transport legislation had advanced to include methods of contactless payment through MasterCard and some smartphones. But the judge said that while the legislation may catch up with technology in the future, the law of the day needed to be followed. Plus, he clearly hates cyborgs.
Mr Meow Meow says that he’s planning on replacing his Opal chip with one that will hold all of his personal information, including credit cards and memberships. That’ll show ’em.
If this guy wants to be a cyborg and save time by not looking for his card, who cares? Just as long as he doesn’t become a cyborg supervillain and terrorize us all. Though we couldn’t take a villain with his name seriously.
[via Geekologie]
You might not need special sensors or old-fashioned inspections to tell whether food has gone bad. If MIT has its way, the tags you already find on your food might do the job. Its researchers have developed a wireless system, RFIQ, that detects pot...
The global trade of counterfeit goods reportedly rakes in half a trillion dollars per year, which isn't good for anyone. (Except for the counterfeiters themselves, I suppose.) As the fakes industry continues to grow, brands are looking to technologi...
Engineering specialists from MIT have devised a way to make RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags more reliable and pick up on chemicals in the surrounding environment -- without needing the typical battery.
China is not holding back on plans to monitor its citizens. Starting on July 1st, when residents register cars, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags will be attached to windshields to track the vehicles, The Wall Street Journal reports. While c...
Not everyone is good at keeping track of their personal belongings, like a backpack or a messenger bag. So CabinR, a startup based out of Hong Kong, wants to help you feel safer on a journey. The company has created two bags, a backpack and a messeng...
CES is flush with giant TVs, smart fridges, and plenty of other superfluous nonsense. So it was a breath of fresh air when a company called Sproutel and Aflac showed up with a robot duck designed to comfort children with cancer. The My Special Aflac...
As far as wireless technologies go, radio-frequency identification (RFID) is one of the oldest. Patented in 1983 by the late British inventor Charles Walton, RFID made it possible for new, cutting-edge tech such as near-field communication (NFC) to e...