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Official Game of Thrones figures top the best Comic-Con toys

Comic-Con isn’t just a time to sell awesome toys; it’s a time to show off the awesome toys companies will be selling in the future! Here are the awesomest action figures and collectibles we’ve spotted during Comic-Con’s first two days. Game of Thrones Finally! Dark Horse has announced that they have the long-sought-after (mostly by…

How These Simple Scimitar Winglets Make the 737 a Whole New Plane

In what will be its first widespread commercial use, Split Scimitar Winglets have officially been giving the go-ahead to grace United Boeing 737-800s all across the country. While winglets themselves are nothing new, this more aerodynamic incarnation should cut fuel costs by 2%—in other words, pushing their total winglet-related savings to $200 million. Inspired by…

A Mechanical Wooden Pencil That Will Never Go Dull

As low-tech as it may be, the pencil has managed to still keep itself relevant—despite the endless graphite-free ways we can communicate these days. That being said, it doesn’t mean it couldn’t use an upgrade, and we love how Tous Les Jours has managed to combine the convenience of a mechanical pencil with the feel…

Divergent Looks Like Harry Potter Playing the Hunger Games

We saw the first-ever footage from forthcoming film Divergent at Comic-Con yesterday, and got the scoop on what this movie based on the incredible bestseller is going to be like. Basically, it looks a lot like the Hunger Games — but with a whole lot of Gryffindor in there too. The premise of Veronica Roth’s…

New Nexus 7 Leak Spills Almost All the Details

We didn’t get any new hardware back at Google I/O, but we’ve heard plenty about a new Nexus 7 on course to be announced sometime this month. Time is running out, but now Engadget has gotten some leaked details that seem to confirm most everything we’ve heard so far. According to the leaked spec sheet…

What the Navy Shoots for Target Practice

Practice makes perfect. That includes the ability to accurately fire some of the biggest, baddest, and deadliest weapons systems in the US Navy. But since the indiscriminate shelling of passing ships is generally frowned upon by the maritime community, here’s what US sailors take aim at instead. The US Navy has long relied on radio…

RED 2 is a classic example of an inferior sequel

RED was a fun little movie, that was worth watching just for Bruce Willis being Batman, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich acting silly and above all Helen Mirren kicking ass in high heels. RED 2 struggles to recapture the magic of the original, but it’s a perfect example of a sequel that doesn’t have a…

This iconic scene from Children of Men was actually an accident

Director Alfonso Cuorón told a rapt Comic-Con audience yesterday how one of the most memorable scenes in his classic movie Children of Men was actually a mistake. In the scene, which you can see above, our group of subversives are attacked while in a car. The tricky part for the director was that it’s all…

Why do women’s bodies run colder than men’s?

Men routinely claim to be more tolerant of cold than women. But where does this physiological difference stem from, and are there any studies that have examined its veracity? Of course there are. Some of them even involve rectal thermometers. Yeah, science! Above: A participant at the 2009 Polar Bear Swim in Vancouver, BC, Canada…

How Computer Chess Was Shot With a Vintage Sony Tube Video Camera

Andrew Bujalski’s latest film, Computer Chess, is a black-and-white dive into a the world of programming, and specifically, the quest to teach a computer to play chess better than a human. Throughout Computer Chess, you get to see some classic computing artifacts from the late 70’s and early 80’s like the PDP 11. Besides resurrecting…

Apple’s iWork for iCloud is rolling out in public beta today. The app, announced earlier this month, lets users access and edit Pages, Numbers or Keynote files from any browser. [Cnet]

Android’s Tips for Beautiful Icon Design Are the Opposite of Google’s

Today, Android published a helpful blog post offering up a list of design tips for developers slaving away over new app icons, encouraging them to use shadows, textures, and micro detail. We’re watching Android grow up into its own distinct visual identity—independent even from Google mothership. The list comes courtesy of Roman Nurik, of Android’s…

Massive 4-minute trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s new film The Wind Rises

I was all set to tell you that Miyazaki’s new movie about the early life of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero planes used by the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II, was another quiet Ghibli film. I would have been wrong. There are plane crashes, earthquakes, young girls vomiting blood — it’s…

Join us for the io9 panel tonight at Comic-Con!

Every year, io9 hosts a panel on “science fiction that could change your life.” We and our guests talk about books, movies, TV, comics, games or whatever that came out in the last year — and discuss the best ones that make you think, as well as entertaining you. Join us tonight, at 6:45! The…

A Revolutionary All-Seeing Camera Lens That Puts the Lytro To Shame

It hasn’t exactly been a runaway hit with consumers, but on a technical level the Lytro camera introduced some brilliant innovation to the world of digital photography. Its revolutionary optics capture an almost infinite depth of field letting you adjust focus to whatever’s in the frame when you’re post-processing. But as researchers from Saarland University…

Matt Smith tells Comic-Con: “You’ll forget about me”

Not everything is cosplay and kittens at this year at San Diego Comic-Con. This convention will sadly be the very last for Doctor Who star Matt Smith. And the long road of saying goodbye (for now) to fans has already begun. Someone hand us a tissue. While participating in the “Brave New Warriors” panel with…

10 Urban Legends about Famous Scientists

We’ve all heard stories about killers in the back seat and puppies that turn out to be rats, but hapless heroines aren’t the only ones who spawn urban legends. There are a number of urban legends about famous scientists. Some are funny, some are mere inaccuracies, and some are about committing murder by accident. 10.…

The Best Guess at How Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Transit Fantasy Might Work

Earlier this week, Elon Muskannounced that he would publish an alpha design for his crazy-sounding “Hyperloop” by August 12. According to Musk, the diagram above is as close as anyone has gotten to figuring out how the super-fast transit technology might work. And it seems bonkers. For those of you who have been out of…

How to Be Successful in Life Even If You’re Mediocre

If you are not Steve Wozniak or David Bowie—to name a couple of random exceptional geniuses—chances are that you are pretty mediocre, just like everyone else in the planet. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be highly effective and successful in life. Here are seven habits that will turn your mediocrity in success. Ish.

Apple Gobbled Up a Location Data Startup to Cure Its Map Monster

It had a rough start, but Apple Maps has come a long way from what it was at launch. And the push isn’t over. Apple just picked up a little startup called “Locationary” that specializes in hyperlocal results; you can bet that’ll trickle down into Apple Maps soon. Locationary’s special talent is rounding up crowdsourced…