Is the era of Cyber-Sex finally upon us?

RealTouch: just an other sex toy? Not necessarily. As this slightly NSFW video explains, it offers real sensations at-a-distance. In other words, you stick your manhood in the shell-shaped thing on the right - officially called a masturbator - then log in to a chat session with a “model”. Whatever she does to her “RealTouch JoyStick”, the shell thing reproduces the sensation on your old chap. If you can’t afford a real model, the system is also synchronised with 1500 grot films, so whatever happens to the actor’s wiener in the film also happens to yours. You get the picture.

OK, I’ll admit I’ve not tried it. And yes, there are countless other sex toys out there. But not many to my knowledge have the real-time sex-at-a-distance thing going on.

And more importantly, the thing gave a gay man “the best orgasm in my life, ever,” according to his in-depth review for the French wing of Vice, those gonzo reporters extraordinaires (if you haven’t watched their “on acid” video reports, you haven’t lived. But I diverge). Yes, you read that right. The RealTouch “clam”, designed to feel like a vagina, shouldn’t have had such an effect on a homosexual fellow. But he was totally blown away by it. As it were.

Which makes us wonder if this isn’t the closest to real that fake sex has ever, er, come. Fingers crossed I never need to try it…

Guitar Pee-ro, anyone?

Sorry to lower the tone again, but this is better, possibly, than Sega’s videogame urinal we got so excited about not long ago. Some jokers in Brazil have come up with a rather nifty way of grinding the axe whilst you point Percy at the porcelain. In-urinal pressure pads are pushed by your wee, generating pre-loaded classic RAWK riffs as you eliminate your pint. And as if the surprised looks of the drunk blokes in the above video aren’t priceless enough, “Guitar Pee” has another trick up its sleeve: it records your ‘interpretation’ via an iPhone app, so you can share it with your no-doubt-very-impressed mates.

The name of these tunes’ format? Wait for it… MPee3s! Utter genius :)

Alas, as our friends at evolver.fm point out, Guitar Pee exists only for men right now, and only in Brazil. Fingers crossed!

Sega’s pissing game goes public

Legendary Japanese games firm Sega hit the headlines a while back for Toylet. We looked on astounded to discover that the company’s first hardware since the doomed Dreamcast measures your pissing speed and volume in fittingly bizarre games. Now, for the incredibly expensive price of €1330 (for the ‘console’) and €125 (for a ‘game’), you too can hold urinal Olympics - nay, Wii Sports - in your very own home…

We’re not sure what’s more bizarre: that the gizmo uses microwaves to measure your wee force (should we be worried about our old chaps getting cooked?); that in one game, the harder you piss, the more chance you have of seeing up a girl’s skirt; or the fact that Toylet has clearly done well enough in bars and other reputable establishments for the creators of Sonic to have a stab at selling it to consumers. Either that, or they just can’t get rid of the things…

*insert final wanton wee joke here*

Source: Engadget

Journalists replaced by robots. Already?

Hacks made redundant by algorithms. Such is the scenario depicted by Wired’s Stephen Levy this month (he’s one of the only guys to have ever interviewed Steve Jobs, in case you thought he might be making this up). He tells the tale of Narrative Science, a company which uses algorithms to pull together raw data and spin stories out of it. Just like real journalists do.

The company has above all covered Little League (kiddie) baseball games to date: insignificant enough for no major media organs to cover them; yet important enough for scores of parents to log swathes of match data in iPhone apps and the like. Rich pickings for Narrative Science’s algorithms to trawl through, pick out contextual data - is the team on a losing streak, for example - and add journalistic turns of phrase - “whacking home runs” - and then deliver the final “narrative”.

Financial stories have also become big business for Narrative Science, as this is another data-rich domain, with far too many active companies for one person, nay organisation, to cover.

Two of the most spooky things about this trend:

- The algorithms are ‘trained’ by humans, to make them better at context and style (for some reason I’m imagining a dog handler here)

- More than 90% of news stories will be written by computers by 2027, claims Narrative Science’s boss.

Time to switch career paths?