7. The force is strong with this one. The White House recently turned down a petition to build a Death Star, so this mysterious Kickstarter creator took matters into his own hands. Behold: The open-source Death Star! Having backed 178 projects on the site, he’s hoping that a few might lend a hand in return. £19,000 down, £19,000,000 to go!

    The force is strong with this one.

    The White House recently turned down a petition to build a Death Star, so this mysterious Kickstarter creator took matters into his own hands. Behold: The open-source Death Star!

    Having backed 178 projects on the site, he’s hoping that a few might lend a hand in return. £19,000 down, £19,000,000 to go!

    View on Kickstarter

  8. Oculus Rift behind the scenes.

    Super excited to read the latest update from the Oculus Rift crew. After a great week at CES, the team has been holed up on the factory floor producing the developer kits and cranking out the first 40 units of a pilot run. The plan is to start shipping the full kits to developers in March!

    Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon got to try out the prototype. He just might freak out…

  11. DIY space race?

    “Have you ever dreamed of having your own spacecraft?” An inspiring piece in The Verge on the grassroots space race and the pioneering work of several Kickstarter creators.

    thisistheverge:

    The stars on a shoestring: amateur astronauts ignite a grassroots space race

    Inside an old storage warehouse in an abandoned shipyard in Copenhagen, Kristian von Bengston and Peter Madsen have been building a one-man rocket ship they intend to send on a 15-minute, parabolic trip to the edge of space and back.

    Von Bengston and Madsen’s non-profit, private space agency is called Copenhagen Suborbitals, and is probably the most extreme do-it-yourself project in the world. Von Bengston is an aerospace scientist and former NASA contractor. Madsen is an engineer who founded a DIY collective that built three submarines as a hobby.

    Copenhagen Suborbitals has no government grants, no investors, and no academic affiliation. Instead, they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from ordinary people around the world who donated in exchange for a part of their dream.
    View on Kickstarter

  12. Holding it in your hand, it’s amazing to think that it was designed and assembled by an independent hardware startup funded by Kickstarter…

    Pebble’s charming simplicity and fundamental competence inspires confidence. It’s so good at what it does now that it’s easy to imagine all other things it might do in the future.

    —The Verge’s Nilay Patel reviews the Pebble watch, awarding it an 8.2!