Man Replaces Lost Finger with USB Drive

Too bad about losing your finger in a motorcycle accident, Mr. Jerry Jalava of Riihimäki, Finland. But replacing the missing chunk with a USB drive concealed inside a rubbery fake finger is a pretty brilliant silver lining.

His friend, who first blogged on this, writes:

Now he carries a Billix Linux distribution and the Freddy Got Fingered movie as part of his hand. 

Jalava says:

I'm planning to use the other prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID tag.

Click the image to see the whole flickr set of the USB finger in action.

Not only is this a neat open-sourcealicious hack, it's an interesting study in someone opting against privacy and in favor of reputation-building. Jalava posted the whole story on his blog, each post of which is geotagged with his exact location. He's planning to add an RFID chip to his body, which will make him even easier to track. Dude is not worried about protecting his privacy, even though he's a nine-fingered geek freak (which I mean in the most positive possible way). Instead, he's worried about building his reputation, which is currently experiencing a pretty big bump.  

Via former Reason intern Mike Riggs, who tweets that "the singularity is near, or some shit like that."

More on the upside of zero privacy from me here. Me on Clay Shirky on reputation vs. privacy here. And "Database Nation" here.