
Laser Razor suspended by Kickstarter - aram
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34516907#?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
======
beloch
To those looking for more concrete info on how this razor is supposed to work,
here's the patent for it:

[http://www.google.com/patents/US9017322](http://www.google.com/patents/US9017322)

As far as I can tell, the idea is to use evanescent coupling to transfer light
into hair follicles. There's no free space laser beam, just an optical fiber
that you drag across your face. They also claim that chromophores (color
bearing molecules) in hair can be severed at relatively low powers with a
mixture of several specific frequencies of light.

So, what this product needs in order to work is a fiber that's durable enough
to survive being dragged across skin while having very little cladding so as
to allow evanescent coupling. That could be very hard to do, so the heads on
these laser razors may wear out after a few shaves just like a metal razor.
Second, they need to pack a high power multi-wavelength laser source and the
power reserve to run it into a very tiny handle. Again, this is probably going
to be pretty tricky.

There's nothing here that looks outright impossible to me. Just very, very
tricky.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _chromophores (color bearing molecules) in hair can be severed at relatively
> low powers_

What if you're blond?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Laser hair removal doesn't work well with light hair from what I recall, they
usually require you to use electrolysis instead.

I imagine that we're not doing something radically different here, so the
answer to this would probably be 'it won't work'.

~~~
GhotiFish
wait a sec, I have blond hairs in my beard. In fact, a lot of guys i know do.

------
DannoHung
The thing that is weird about this case is that one of the principals, Morgan
Gustavsson, is actually the dude who invented the real laser hair removal that
is used in clinics and has been involved in dermatology since.

I don't know if he was actually involved in this project or not, but that was
the one thing that made me think that this maybe wasn't 100% a scam?

Anyway, the implication they make in their pitch isn't that it's an open
laser, but that it is a laser confined to a fiberoptic wire which leaks into
the hair when pressed against it. Gustavsson has published some papers on this
a few years ago in which he refers to the concept as a TRASER.

Of course, if this really is such a revolutionary advance, why go to
Kickstarter to bring it to market? Why not traditional investors. Gotta be
easier to get funding for a significant manufacturing outlay, right? Just to
not have to sell a piece of the company? To justify that there is a market?

I personally don't have the background to make any judgments about this and I
definitely don't understand the article he published, but I just thought it
didn't _completely_ fail the smell test.

~~~
d23
> Of course, if this really is such a revolutionary advance, why go to
> Kickstarter to bring it to market? Why not traditional investors.

The obvious benefit being that you don't actually have to give Kickstarter
"investors" any money back.

~~~
pavornyoh
>The obvious benefit being that you don't actually have to give Kickstarter
"investors" any money back.

Shouldn't that make them have strong check and balances in place to help
people funding these projects?

~~~
mesozoic
You would think...

~~~
pavornyoh
In an article in the Huffington post a while back, it said the Feds are now
going after people who don't follow through. I also hope while they are at it,
they can do something to help protect these vulnerable people giving money to
support projects without proper education about what they are supporting.

Here is the article -[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/feds-regulate-
crowd...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/11/feds-regulate-
crowdfundin_n_7565952.html)

~~~
qq66
The Feds go after people who just walk away with the money. They do not, and
should not, go after people who fail to achieve the objective -- that would
defeat the point of crowdfunding.

~~~
pavornyoh
> They do not, and should not, go after people who fail to achieve the
> objective -- that would defeat the point of crowdfunding.

I agree. But they can somehow force the hands of Kickstarter and its
competitors to have some mechanism in place to protect consumers from
contributing to such bogus projects. I looked at the Kickstarter page and it
seems any creature can post and request their projects be funded. Some of the
scam are poorly disguised while others are masterfully disguised such as the
one for which the is thread is created.

~~~
qq66
Sure, some validation is important, and Kickstarter has their own incentive to
ensure some baseline quality independent of regulation. Fraudsters should be
prosecuted, but I hope that people aren't discouraged from launching
Kickstarter initiatives because they're afraid of genuine product execution
risk turning into personal criminal or civil liability.

------
dogma1138
It's sad that people thought it was real, forget about lasers and stuff it's
basic common sense.

A AAA battery doesn't store enough power to drive a laser capable of burning
hair for any reasonable amount of time.

When the laser isn't interrupted by the hair it has to go some where which
means that heat is produced, if it can get something hot enough to burn the
hair off it would get hot enough that you won't be able to hold it yet alone
put it to your face.

There's no way you would ever could get the laser beam close enough to the
skin for a smooth shave without burning your skin off.

And most importantly burnt hair smells like shit....

P.S. I assume that most people know at least 1 person that did laser hair
removal, they should know it's a very painful and long process and it works
only on dark hairs so again using this to shave anything but a fairly dark
beard would never work.

~~~
delecti
I've done laser hair removal, and while it does hurt like a bitch, and does
only work on dark hairs, the claims were that the razor would use a wavelength
that targeted all hair (I don't know enough to say that's not plausible), and
presumably they'd use a short enough focal length to only hit exposed hair,
rather than the normal method of focusing on the hair below the surface.

Doesn't get around the smell, power requirement, or heat output though.

~~~
frandroid
If there already was a wavelength that targets all hair colour, they would use
it already with other hair removal treatments, you'd think.

~~~
delecti
True, that is indeed another hole in their story.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The other is that there's a critical difference between hair cutting - which
is what this claimed to do - and hair follicle killing, which is what laser
and IPL treatments do.

Existing treatments are supposed to kill follicles permanently.

This suggest it trims hair but doesn't leave you permanently beardless.

They can't possibly work the same way.

So I think KS did the right thing. Too many people have been using it in
scammy ways, and that makes it less effective for anyone with a genuine
product, talent, or idea to sell.

Having said that - the scams only work when you have a market full of people
who don't know enough about basic science or simple online research to check
unlikely claims. And that's been the real problem with KS, IGG, and the rest -
it's just too damn easy to make money from a few hours of 3D rendering to
create a shiny sketch of a product that can't possibly work, or (at best)
can't possibly be developed without far more investment.

------
aram
Since we all check the comments first, here are some links:

KickStarter project page (suspended):

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skarp/the-skarp-
laser-r...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skarp/the-skarp-laser-
razor-21st-century-shaving)

IndieGoGo project page (they re-posted the project there after being
suspended):

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-skarp-laser-
razor-21s...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-skarp-laser-razor-21st-
century-shaving#/)

Demonstration video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOLwNJ7TXWA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOLwNJ7TXWA)

~~~
steckerbrett
There's no laser there. If there was a laser there it would be a significant
hazard to everybody in the room, so it's good it's completely fake. With the
sort of power you would need to be cutting hairs in any capacity simply
looking at diffuse reflections (think a laser dot at a wall) would have the
ability to permanently damage your vision. The video is someone fooling around
with a piece of aluminum and a hot wire[0]. It's a testament to human
stupidity that something this blatant managed to get $4M.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-
wire_foam_cutter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-wire_foam_cutter)

~~~
cabbeer
> It's a testament to human stupidity that something this blatant managed to
> get $4M.

That's a bit harsh. Most people don't understand technology on a functional
level. Ask a "regular" person how programming, the internet or their mobile
phone works and they won't be able to give you a technical explanation. In
fact, most modern technology tries to hide the internal workings.. "it just
works".

~~~
Pxtl
Heck, ask a programmer what a MOSFET is.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Or ask and EE what a closure is.

But seriously, some programmers will actually know what a MOSFET is.

~~~
logfromblammo
I am a programmer that knows what a MOSFET is. I had to know in order to pass
intro to digital logic.

They are 4-connection devices, but _usually_ source is connected to body. They
come in n-type and p-type, and _usually_ operate in enhancement mode, where
the channel between source and drain opens when the signals to gate and body
are different. With those, you can either pass a weak digital 0 or a strong 1,
or a weak 1 and a strong 0, so in order to produce a digital output that has
strong 0 or strong 1 for every possible input and doesn't "leak" power, you
can combine the result of the 0 logic with the result of the 1 logic. Hence
the term _complimentary_ MOS (CMOS).

So a CMOS NOT gate has 2 MOSFETs: one n-type, and one p-type. A NAND gate has
4 MOSFETs, 2 of each type: the zero logic connected in series, and the one
logic in parallel.

This knowledge--that I never really needed to write software for a living--was
all building up to constructing a basic ALU using digital logic gate chips on
breadboards with DIP input switches, LED outputs, and a manually-switched
clock signal. I'm glad that I know it, but I'm mostly willing to trust the
folks at Intel and AMD to do 64-bit ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, and MOD correctly on
integers.

Should I ever really need to, I could _probably_ pick apart a very high-
resolution image of a CMOS chip. I wouldn't necessarily be able to design such
a chip, but I could _eventually_ tell you what it does. And knowing what I
know, I also have some idea that manipulating 32-bit floats on an 8-bit
integer ALU is going to require _much_ more complexity in the microcode or
software.

That level of detail is not necessary for me to know that shaving with a laser
is practically untenable in 2015. It's the sort of thing that I might expect
in sci-fi as a hand-wavey sort of marker of a futuristic setting, but it will
probably never happen. It's more likely that we'll have an epigenetic
treatment that simply instructs follicle cells to either stop growing hair
entirely, or to make the hairs they grow be pigmentless and reduced in
diameter. Until then, steel blades will continue to work just fine.

Even there, I am still skeptical that five parallel blades are really better
than one. So to me, when you propose that I shave with a laser, I will roll my
eyes at you just as hard as if you suggested that I pay 40% more per shave to
add a _sixth_ blade _and a magnet_ to my razor. Human hair is not evolving
defenses against older shaving technology. You can still scrape your face with
knapped flint if you needed to.

If people are stupid about laser shaves, it may be because they have been well
primed for this nonsense by the advertisements of Schick and Gillette and
their flexy, bendy, swivelling, lubricating, blinking, bleeping, 20-bladed
shaving heads.

------
Sephr
> Backers received an email from Kickstarter saying the Laser Razor was "in
> violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that
> are offered as rewards".

Interesting. Was this a recent policy change? Control VR never showed any
working prototypes either, and their campaign was allowed (this was in 2014).
Their demonstration video was later revealed to be using another company's
significantly more expensive product ($10k+ vs the $600 pledge price), with
zero modifications. They never demonstrated any prototypes of the product they
were claiming to develop themselves, yet the campaign went through and now
they have everyone's money (>$400k) without delivering.

~~~
canow
that policy is probably about a couple years old.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is there a site that tracks these sorts of policy changes (like
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/) does for UK
laws)?

~~~
jamessb
"TOSBack is a collaboration between the EFF, the Internet Society, and ToS;DR.
Every day, we check the Terms and Policies of many online services to see if
any of them have changed"

[https://tosback.org/](https://tosback.org/)

But it is currently in beta and doesn't include Kickstarter.

------
hoopism
hackaday.com had a good writeup that was skeptical of this.

[http://hackaday.com/2015/10/01/ask-hackaday-i-love-the-
smell...](http://hackaday.com/2015/10/01/ask-hackaday-i-love-the-smell-of-
burnt-hair-in-the-morning/)

They have generally been good at writing up some of the more sketchy
kickstarts.

~~~
rasz_pl
like Soap router, hackaday approved!!1

------
vicbrooker
Their prototype reminds me of concept car designs that look great but don't
have enough internal space for an engine. You'd maybe fit a AAA battery in the
handle but I haven't even seen a torch that works without more juice.

Also, I was kind of suspicious when I noticed that more than half of the team
have beards.

~~~
steckerbrett
I doubt you could get more than a watt out of a AAA anyway.

~~~
thisisdave
A one-watt laser is pretty powerful (Class 4). Most laser pointers in the US
can't exceed 5 milliwatts. One watt is several times what's needed to light
various common materials on fire.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woiTedSKPrk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woiTedSKPrk)

~~~
steckerbrett
They do additionally claim a 10 year battery life.

------
ortusdux
In light of the recent actions of the Washington State Attorney General, it
takes balls to try and pull a scam like this. The AG ruled against the people
behind a kickstarter campaign for a card game when they did not ship rewards
for two years. The original campaign raised 25k and the judgement was for 56k.
The ruling was on behalf of 31 residents out of 810 backers. The company is
slowly shipping units and it looks like the AG is backing off.

But this whole thing brings up many interesting questions. The fine was 1k per
WA resident + reimbursement + legal fees. Knowing that the AG has your back if
things go south should undoubtedly embolden WA residents, which may lead to a
higher percentage of backers coming from that state, which in turn would mean
a higher fine if things fall through. I honestly was going to have my sister,
a WA state resident, back this for me for my birthday, if it survived to the
last day of funding.

Links:

[http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-makes-
crowdfunde...](http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-makes-crowdfunded-
company-pay-shady-deal)

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/213177064/asylum-
playin...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/213177064/asylum-playing-
cards/comments)

~~~
rasz_pl
Yes, that punishment was pretty severe, offender had to ... promise to never
do it again.

------
blakecallens
If Indiegogo doesn't suspend them too, it could be a real watershed moment for
them. It'll brand them as the place to go for scam products.

~~~
driverdan
They already are.

~~~
InclinedPlane
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tellspec-what-s-in-
your-f...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tellspec-what-s-in-your-food#/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm assuming from the context you're touting that as an example of a "scam
product" \- first time I've heard of them but
[http://tellspec.com/order/](http://tellspec.com/order/) has beta device for
purchase at present and they appear to be getting plaudits eg "Selected to be
part of the HIVE at TED Med 2015" is on their website (and confirmed at TED
MED).

Surely ordering the beta would show straight away that the product was
entirely non-functional (ie fake)?

Did I miss something that you're relying on to form this opinion?

Edit: perhaps [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-
busi...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-
growth/day-to-day/backers-often-face-long-delays-for-crowdfunded-
products/article23057331/) ?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yes, almost certainly a scam, for a few reasons. The first being that hand-
held Raman spectroscopy devices are currently the realm of _extremely_ pricey
systems that are targeted at industry primarily (we're talking $10k at the
very, very low end). Building a hand-held device that could do even a tiny
fraction of what those units are capable of would be hugely disruptive for
that market. So why not approach that market at all? Probably because it's
vastly more savvy than consumers. Additionally, there is absolutely zero hard
info anywhere about their device, it's design, it's specs, anything like that.
Not only isn't there a specrum, there isn't even a "this is what a spectrum
from our final equipment might look like" representation. It's all smoke and
mirrors.

The biggest giveaway in that particular campaign though is something that most
ordinary people won't pick up on: gluten. You tell someone that a spectrometer
can detect sugar, they'll nod, you tell someone that it can detect gluten and
they'll still nod, but people who know better will have their ears perk up.
Because gluten is just a protein, and proteins are a nightmare when it comes
to spectroscopy. Spectroscopy picks up the different bonds that are in a
molecule. A simple molecule with only a few, very different bonds is easy to
distinguish. But proteins are polymers made up of tens of thousands to
millions of amino-acids, which blur together in spectroscopy. To distinguish
different proteins from one another with _any_ kind of spectroscopy (whether
Raman, IR, or even NMR) requires high end equipment which can give you very
high resolution spectra. A low cost, consumer grade spectrometer is going to
have very low resolution and be even more difficult to do. If they could pull
it off it would be a tremendous breakthrough. The idea that they've made such
a huge leap without seeking traditional investors to go after the industrial
market, without any substantive research backing is, frankly, not robust
against the much more realistic probability that they are pulling some sort of
scam that involves a device that maybe has some capability or other but is
nothing like what they say it is.

------
MattGrommes
As soon as I saw that Kickstarter kicked them off I was wondering how long it
would take for them to get onto Indiegogo. Then, of course I see it only took
4 hours.

If you're unaware, Indiegogo has shown that they're more than willing to be
the platform of choice for scammers and nonsense products.

------
joshdance
I really want a Kickstarter review site, where people can post projects. Since
non-backers cannot post comments there is no way to let people know that 'this
project is probably not going to work'. Snopes for Kickstarter?

~~~
jkestner
[http://drop-kicker.com](http://drop-kicker.com) was excellent from an
engineering viewpoint but it's gone dormant. [http://eevblog.com/forum/crowd-
funded-projects/](http://eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/) is not bad
if you want to hear a bunch of skeptical engineers tear things to shreds.

A site that focuses on the shipping milestones, the true measure of success
rather than meeting an arbitrary goal, would be valuable.

------
ibmthrowaway271
Do not look into razor with remaining eye?

------
steven2012
This current phenomenon about crowdsourcing products is similar to the
GroupOn/flash sale phenomenon, and as the products get shittier and shittier,
and as more and more get disillusioned by it, the entire space will die.

Kickstarter and IndieGoGo need to do a much, much better job policing this,
otherwise they will be out of business in 2 years. There are too many shitty
products with great marketing videos that are taking a lot of money, and they
will likely all be disappointing as hell.

~~~
DaveWalk
I like your highlighting of quality. Do you think it is a real or just
perceived notion that the quality of items on Kickstarter/Groupon decreases as
their popularity increases? At first glance it feels to me that it casts too
broad of a net. Maybe if a user saw it as patronage when Kickstarting artistic
endeavors, she might bristle at seeing baubles like laser razors being funded?

Anecdotally I see this with video games on Steam Greenlight, but that service
always seemed liked the Wild West to me.

------
danr4
I don't like what has become of kickstarter, but I think it's more of it's
users fault than the company. They are really trying to stick to their values
and principals, and mission despite having the possibilty to go the usual
'lets raise bazillions and get some flippin growth and extinguish the
competition' way

~~~
jkestner
There's more than one Kickstarter. Lots of us live below the million-dollar
campaigns that are more the product than whatever's being sold. With less hype
and more right-minded Kickstarter patrons, everything's a little more
straightforward. It's the middle-class campaigns that remain the heart of
Kickstarter.

------
RUG3Y
"Don't worry, it'll be ready by spring." lol

------
wlesieutre

        "They have been incredibly helpful and they believe in the 
        Skarp Razor as much as we do," the firm said of Indiegogo.
    

is a very polite way of saying "Yeah, we don't believe in our own product
either"

------
BinaryIdiot
How can you prove to potential buyers that you're able to produce the product
you're selling them if you can't create a prototype demonstrating that it
works?

Let's say we take everything at face value and believe 100% they can do this
and that it is not a scam. If there is no prototype it's still possible that
it could not work as it's unproven.

------
Paul_S
Reminds me of that hologram device scam - bleen. It was so funny I couldn't
tell if it was a scam or a parody trying to make fun of crowdfunding.
Unfortunately it was flexible funding so people lost their money and whatever
you think no one deserves to be scammed.

------
jakejake
I couldn't help but wonder if this would ultimately produce the same result as
the "No No" shaver which, from what I read, is just a hot wire that burns the
hair at the root.

The reviews make it sound like its a rather slow and smelly affair shaving
this way.

------
aet
A fool and his money, be soone at debate: which after with sorow, repents him
to late.

------
jlebrech
What made me skeptical of this is that it looked like too much of a polished
system, you'd expect it to look more like a braun shaver than a gillette
fusion, with more battery space. The AA battery was also a dead giveaway.

------
ipsin
The name "Skarp" \-- possibly in conjunction with "Kickstarter" \--
immediately made me think of "scarper", i.e. the process of fleeing, ideally
with the big bag of crowdfunding money.

------
happywolf
Anything that heats a hair to the point it burns off, no matter what the heat
source is, will give out a bad smell. Good luck if one has thick beard, and
no, I am not convinced this will work cleanly.

------
Simulacra
Unpopular opinion, but I think parents should be assigned based on actual
working models of something. Not just an idea, but something that is actually
been tangibly created.

------
kazinator
Laser Razor will clearly have to show actual hair removal to prove itself;
fleecing countless sheep of millions is a mere metaphor.

------
funkaster
lol... what I found funny and somewhat ironic is that most of the people in
the video seem to wear a beard? (or lack of shaving) Maybe they're waiting
until they can get their hands in an actual working prototype :P

------
bsder
Um, folks, you're missing the obvious.

Optic fiber glass is _SHARP AS HELL_.

So, make the thing light up with pretty lights and colors and expose a sharp
glass edge for cutting.

Works like a razor, cuts incredibly closely, and has _ooh shiny_ for
marketing.

I'm not seeing a problem with this.

