Photo: anfael_

Juicero was a fantastically over-engineered $400 juicing machine whose key innovation was DRM fruit slime that you can just squeeze out the bag anyway. The company went out of business six months ago, and Juiceros are now turning up in thrift stores, as observed by anfael_ on Twitter. — Read the rest

Big VC firms like Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins invested $118 million to fund a company that made a $400 machine that squeezed juice out of proprietary juice packets. Now they have nothing to show for it besides over-engineered machines destined for the dump. — Read the rest

It's easy to squeeze the juice out of a Juicero juice bag with your bare hands. But for some reason, the $400 Juicero machine was built to squeeze charcoal briquettes into diamonds. Ben Einstein, a product designer and venture capitalist, took one apart to see what was inside. — Read the rest

Bloomberg reports that Juicero, a $400 gadget that "transformed single-serving packets of chopped fruit and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage" displeased investors who feel misled about what it does.

See, it turns out that the special bags it uses can simply be squeezed by hand into a glass. — Read the rest

Telly is an ad-supported 55" TV set shipped free of charge to customers willing to watch extra commercials, piped into a secondary display beneath the main one. The company says it'll ship out 500,000 by the end of the year, with a waiting list stretching into 2024. — Read the rest

Dead Startup Toys is selection of classic crap gadgets recreated in nonfunctional funsize form. There are adorable Juiceros and Jibos, internet-of-things drink coolers, the well-meaning but hell-bent One Laptop Per Child, and of course the greatest of them all, the Theranos blood assay Minilab that raised nearly a billion dollars and was for all intents and purposes a fraud. — Read the rest

Hearthcabinet's "Ventless Fireplaces" use "pre-filled alcohol gel cartridges" — that is, proprietary logs. When Drew quizzed the company's reps about this on Facebook, they danced around the question, but yeah, it's proprietary logs all right. The company notes that the design is patented (the founder, a product liability attorney named Michael Weinberger, has many related patents) so presumably this is the firm's primary method to prevent third-party log makers or log refillers. — Read the rest

PancakeBot 3D prints (somewhat) edible griddlecakes from your own design, or from a library of present options like the Eiffel Tower or a T. rex.

People who buy sex toys generally want "high-quality, ergonomically designed toys that are intuitive to use," but Silicon Valley keeps delivering "innovative" and commercially unsuccessful sex toys whose selling-points are their "flashy apps and connectivity."

MIT Tech Review's Antonio Regalado rounds up the year's stupidest, worst moments in tech, from the guy who created his own CRISPR-based gene therapy to beef up his muscles and injected it to Donald Trump's Twitter feed to the FCC's Net Neutrality catastrophe. — Read the rest

The Juicero was a $400 "juicer" that squeezed packets of DRM-locked fruit pulp, an idea so perverse that it got honorable mention in DRM's worst moments of 2017, and inspired sighs of relief when the business cratered in 2017, as evidence of the fundamental soundness of human judgment in a year plagued by serious lapses in same.

"My company signed up for a $1000/year subscription-based water cooler. It was just so sketchy that I had to make a review," writes Redditor kibitzor on his office's ION Bottleless Water Cooler.

The video that follows is an amusing takedown of the machine as he tries to dispense a simple glass of "mildly carbonated" water from it. — Read the rest

Apparently enough people weren't smart enough to appreciate a $1000 wireless teapot that only accept proprietary tea bags. After blowing through $12 million (in a Series A round led by Translink Capital) and spending three years trying to persuade tea drinkers to ditch their dumb teapots for one that uses an algorithm that "masterfully accelerates and extracts desired sets of flavor compounds while suppressing the extraction of undesired compounds," Teforia (pronounced tay-foria) is calling it quits. — Read the rest

What could be dumber that a smart machine that empties an expensive DRM'd bag of juice into a glass? How about a smart salt shaker that plays music and blinks colored LEDs? It's called a Smalt.

It's a joke, right? — Read the rest

AquaGenie is "the world's smartest water bottle," a $70 internet-of-things device that "knows your water goals" and will connect to the Internet to inform you if you have met them.

AquaGenie is your daily companion that keeps you on track and fully hydrated, helping you achieve all your health, wellness, fitness and weight loss goals!

Something Awful is running a letter of explanation written by the CEO of Lobstero, who is fighting back against unfair criticism of its wi-fi enabled lobster dispensing unit.

First, let me be very clear: Lobstero's Lobster Packs are much more than just a lobster in a plastic bag.

Juicero is a self-parodying high-tech juicing machine that raised millions in venture capital on the promise of delivering a highly calibrated squeeze to a pack of mulch sold in expensive, DRM-locked pouches, for a mere $400.

This has been out for a while, but my IFTF colleague Brad just told me about it last week. It's the $400 Juicero juicing machine. To make juice with it, you must subscribe to receive pre-masticated produce that comes in packs (priced between $7 and $10 per pack, $35 to $50 per week). — Read the rest