After a slow start, the tech space has doubled down with the weird and wacky shit, with September being one of the most jam-packed months to date. First, the Ray-Ban/Facebook glasses dropped, a sleek pair of sunnies with hidden recording capabilities.

THEY LOOK LIKE EVERYDAY SUNGLASSES. Creepy or cool? I can’t decide, but The Zuck looks a tad edgy in them, so rest assured they’ll suit everyone.

Next up: The Elizabeth Holmes Theranos trial which equals a bunch of tech journos publishing way too many think pieces, as they slaver every soundbite from the girl who fooled them so spectacularly. The hyperbole extravaganza includes the phrase, “The villain the government just presented is actually a living, breathing human being.” Thanks for clearing that up, but not sure using the term “villain” is going to channel the right vibes.

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Then, in a WTF moment for millennials and a duh for Gen-Z is the advent of college classes that teach students how to store their files. Like, Homework 1: Subfolder Class A. Subfolder Class B, and so on. One reason for this: Gen-Z’s familiarity with the computer “search” function. “There’s not a conception that there’s a place where files live. They just search for it and bring it up,” said Saavik Ford, a professor of astronomy at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. This doesn't work for all STEM stuff, hence the training. Mmmkay.

Moving on, this September, our favorite game, “Two Truths and a Lie: The Silicon Valley Startup Edition,” takes an eco-twist.

Out of the following three green startups, which is fake?

• A company that’s developed plant-based hair extensions for stylists.
• A company that’s developed wood-free wood for use in guitars.
• A company that’s developed water-free water for drought-ridden locales.

(Scroll to the bottom for the answers.)

Know of some ridic stuff happening in tech? Email, DM, or tweet me to include it in next month’s edition.

BubbleLick Makes Blowing Bubbles Literally Bubblicious

I clearly need to up my toy game, as I didn’t realize the bubbleverse was something that needed disrupting. I just figured, y’know, you dip, you blow…My bad. Enter Jason Tiger (apparently his real name), CEO of Bubble Universe, who’s “on a trajectory to reinvent and disrupt the bubble industry.”

Tiger, in his infinite wisdom, decided that merely blowing bubbles in the tried and tested fashion was so 20th century and dreamed of selling lickable, flavored bubbles, that engaged users' taste buds as well as their eyeballs. Available in four flavors, milk chocolate chip, juicy watermelon splash, Glazed cinnamon roll, and carnival cotton candy, Tiger’s bubble solution uses FDA-approved food additives and is manufactured in the US. Their advertising is… special. I’d love to know what’s going through the head of the male model as the director shouts for him to lick and look happy: I went from catwalks to this? What am I doing with my life? Maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Diving a little deeper, it appears there are other edible bubble brands (who knew?) and Bubble Lick itself has been around longer than their press release suggests — web articles date back to 2016 when BubbleLick was sold in kits that allowed people to mix it with booze… I guess they figured kids were a bigger market.

Convinced? $34.99 buys you a four-pack of flavors.

Finally, a Dog Poop Roomba

Go to a certain section of YouTube and you’ll find video after video of iRobot’s Roomba’s smearing doggie doo all over people’s homes to the horror of their owners. Ick. I blame the owners… don’t you guys housetrain your dogs? Anyways, without control, it makes sense why poop-apocalypses happen — how’s a robot able to identify and avoid a piece of poop when it’s cleaning a floor? I’m glad you asked…

Introducing the $849 Roomba j7+, reports The Washington Post. This new bot comes equipped with poop-identification AI which makes it able to avoid doo-doo, and (if requested) will even text you a PICTURE of the crap pile… so you can praise it later, like a good robot puppy? Good Roomba, yes you are…

Sure, to get to this level of finesse, you have to allow their front-facing camera to capture data, which it then compares to a library of some 100 physical poop models of poop and a bunch of algorithms. This raises *some* privacy issues, but srsly, no more poopy floors? That’s a win by me.

I’m also tickled by iRobot CEO Colin Angle’s earnest explainer of how their poop recognition works. “Poop comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes,” he says, as pictures of feces, small, large, round, and long flicker on the screen. “(We) identify and avoid number two.”To be fair, the feces appear to be clay models… I wonder whose job it was to make those?

Like, someone, somewhere, got paid a ton to be iRobot’s fake poop designer? What a world.

iChina’s Brings (More) Fancy Dining to Silicon Valley

Y’know what Silicon Valley needed? Affordable housing? Better schools? More social care for the homeless? Nope. Another out-of-my-price range fancy-ass restaurant, obv. Enter iChina, a Santa Clara-based fine dining establishment with real jade and gold built into the decor, reports Silicon Valley. Their most extravagant offering is the so-named 360 Virtual Reality room, a private dining space equipped with eight projectors that cover the walls and table with themes designs — think moving aquarium for a fish course, for example. Their “sensor-enabled” table adds to the experience… quite how is unclear because that’s all they’re giving you, but based on my experience at Scrap’s Spellbound Supper (which ran a few years ago in Japantown, San Francisco) I theorize that moving images will float across the table, which can be directed by touching and swiping in certain places. Cool, but does that justify their $4,500 minimum spend, vs. Scrap’s $45. I dunno. Also, to be nitpicky, this isn't virtual reality, this is augmented reality, k?

Anyhoo, a dive into iChina’s Yelp reviews range from “dang fancy,” and “so savory,” to “treat yourself to iChina not for the food but for how gorgeous the restaurant is.” One reviewer said the Oolong cocktail “tasted like cough syrup.” I’ll end this summation with Yelper Anthony C’s description of the restrooms. “The sights you are greeted with through the main bathroom door could pause childbirth with its beauty, it’s truly an experience in and of itself. Glittering Art Deco gold patterns and green marble grace your eye… skip the cocktails and food though.”

Hey, restroom rating is a THING, y’know?

Answers to “Two Truths and a Lie”: The water-free water startup is the fake one. Aja Labs makes plant-based hair extensions and BlackBird Guitars makes the wood-free guitars from Ekoa, a flax linen fiber, and bio-based resin.