Baidu Kuaisou "smart chopsticks" are designed to detect gutter oil, which is dredged from sewers or garbage disposals and sold to restaurants.
Update 14-Nov-2015: Both videos are new!
(Baidu Kuaisou chopsticks)
The product was hyped today at Baidu's annual conference in Beijing, alongside a Google Glass-like product called Baidu Eye. But Kuaisuo, like the recently-introduced Vessyl smart cup, reportedly uses a series of sensors to determine metrics like oil quality, temperature, PH levels, and even calories, then transmits that information to an app. A tiny blue LED at the tip of the chopsticks would give you an on-sight reading.
Exotic food fans of Dune, the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, are familiar with the poison snoopers used to detect poison in the food (chaumas):
Paul saw his father in the doorway, avoided his eyes. He looked around at the clusterings of guests, the jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers)...
Pausing in the doorway to inspect the arrangements, the Duke thought about the poison-snooper and what it signified in his society. All of a pattern, he thought. You can plumb us by our language--the precise and delicate delineations for ways to administer treacherous death. Will someone try chaumurky tonight--poison in the drink? Or will it be chaumas--poison in the food?
Via Gizmodo; thanks to Peter Jacobs for writing in with the tip and the reference.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/12/2014)
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