These 3D Printed Masks Are a Mugger's Dream Come True [Japan]

By Adrian Covert Oct 10, 2011 5:40 PM 23,060 36

For $4000, a Japanese company called Real-f will make a photorealistic mask of your face they call a three-dimensional photo form. Sure, you can tell it's fake if you look close enough. But what if you weren't looking so closely?

I could imagine a mugger wearing a mask that looked nothing like their face, and if they acted quickly enough, could potentially get away without victims or witnesses or cameras realizing they had a mask on. That's an unnerving thought! That said, the mask itself looks awesome thanks to some special techniques described by TechCrunch:

The way it works is that REAL-f first shoots pictures of a person's face from various positions and imprints the image on vinyl chloride resin stretched over a mold. According to the company, it's unique production technology makes sure that even details like the iris and blood vessels are replicated accurately (see the pictures to judge for yourself)."

I don't want to look at this picture anymore. The girl in the lower right part of the photo is going to haunt my dreams. [Real-f via TechCrunch]

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Qwikster Disappears Like the Bad Dream It Was [NetFlix]

By Brian Barrett Oct 10, 2011 8:18 AM 28,693 106

Oh, goodness, remember that time that Netflix cut itself in half like in Superman III, birthing the ill-conceived, foul-mouthed-stoner-Twitter-handled DVD-only Qwikster? Well, Qwikster is dead, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Long live Netflix.

The backtrack is a welcome—and as abrupt and surprising as its antecedent—move for the streaming company, which acknowledged in a blog post today that Qwikster was ill-fated from the start:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.

While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.

Does this means Hastings suddenly sees a future in DVDs where perhaps there wasn't one just a few weeks ago? Not likely! It was Netflix shareholders that put a gun to Qwikster's head on the day it was announced, and a precipitous loss of market share that pulled the trigger.

Which might actually turn out to be a shame: Qwikster's introduction was awkward and hasty and sounded like a chocolate milk-inspired superhero, but keeping DVDs at an arm's length may have actually been the best thing for a company that wants to thrive not just today but ten and twenty years from now. You know, when DVDs are interred next to 8-Tracks in the format graveyard.

For now, though: Qwikster, we hardly knew ye. Actually, we didn't know ye at all; we cut our DVD plan a year ago and haven't looked back. [Netflix]

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