Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Here’s how to transform plastic bottles into strong, versatile string

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

Do you own a small block of wood and a knife? Looking for something MacGyver-esque to do with all those plastic bottles you’ve got piled up? Constantly find yourself short of string?

If the stars align in such a way that you answered “yes” to all three of the above questions, then you may be interested in a nifty “survival hack” demonstrated by YouTuber Grant Thomson in one of his latest videos. As the owner of the “King of Random” YouTube Channel, Thomson makes videos exploring a wide range of “life hacks, experiments, and random weekend projects.” In this particular video he teaches us how to make near endless supplies of strong plastic string using the most basic of tools.

Recommended Videos

The “hack” involves cutting a small block of wood and then sticking a knife into it to form a makeshift blade. Into this, Thomson then feeds a bottle, which — provided the blade is positioned correctly — cuts incredibly thin strips of bottle. Pulling the bottle then transforms it into string. Using just a few bottles, he ends up making more than 1,200 feet of string.

That’s not his only similar hack, either. Inspired by his string-making success, Thomson then goes onto fashion the string into plastic ropes, using a previous contraption he had created.

“I’ve seen soda bottle string, but with my rope-making machine [that I] recently created, it made me wonder what would happen if I put the two together,” he told Digital Trends. “Many comments were asking me to combine several ropes as well, and this was the perfect opportunity to try that as well to see what would happen.”

Soda Bottle Rope

As for practical applications … well, they’re pretty much what you would expect. “The practical applications for soda bottle rope are probably the same as anything you could use rope for I imagine,” he said. “If you got the strands thin enough, it would be even finer.”

Well, that takes care of one part of our zombie apocalypse survival kit. Now we just need someone who can tell us how to fashion discarded cable ties into a bludgeoning tool…

Luke Dormehl
Luke Dormehl
Former Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Topics
Pangram, the gold standard for AI text checks, releases Image 1.0 tool to sniff fake pics and videos
It can identify AI-generated pictures with an astounding 99.96% accuracy on its own evaluation set.
AI image detector tool pangram

Pangram, one of the most widely used and trusted AI text detectors out there, is finally releasing its multimedia detection tools to the masses. Pangram Image 1.0, which was previously available as a research preview, is now widely available on the web, through the company’s API, and via its eponymous Chrome extension.

The company claims its image detector can identify AI-generated pictures with an astounding 99.96% accuracy on its own evaluation set. Pangram also notes that it has improved the model’s accuracy over the past few months, especially against edited images, low-resolution pictures, and pictures made by the most advanced AI models out there. As far as the competition goes, TruthScan achieves an accuracy of 96.33%, followed by AI or Not at 91.38% and Sightengine at 88.33%.

Read more
Scammers are using AI to fake missing pet photos, and what happens next is horrifying
Criminals are using AI-generated pet photos to convince desperate owners their missing animals have been found, before demanding money and making disturbing threats.
Brown and white cat meowing in Inzoi.

Losing a pet can be heartbreaking, and anyone who's experienced it knows how quickly you'd drop everything if someone called to say they'd found your missing dog or cat. Unfortunately, scammers have learned to exploit that desperation, and AI is making their tricks even more convincing.

A disturbing new scam is targeting pet owners across the UK, with criminals using AI-generated images to pretend they've found missing animals. They then demand money for their return, sometimes going as far as threatening to kill the pets if the owners refuse to pay. According to a BBC report, several pet owners have already experienced these attacks, with scammers using convincing photographs, emotional stories, and increasingly aggressive messages to pressure them into paying.

Read more
AI can turn your Instagram posts into scam that know a little too much about you
Your public social media posts could be helping scammers create emails that feel personal, and existing AI safeguards aren't doing enough to stop them.
Electronics, Mobile Phone, Phone

We've all received those suspicious emails claiming we've won something, missed a delivery, or need to urgently update our bank details. Most are easy enough to ignore, especially when they're full of strange wording or have absolutely nothing to do with us. But what happens when a scam email actually knows what you've been up to lately? That's where things get a little worrying.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have found that AI can use information people share publicly on social media to create phishing emails that feel personal. And we're not just talking about knowing your name or where you work. These emails can reference things you've recently done, places you've visited, or even something you've been looking forward to. The researchers showed how widely available AI models could gather these details and turn them into targeted messages, potentially letting scammers reach large numbers of people without spending hours researching each person individually.

Read more