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Half Price Harman Kardon Headphones Are Your Deal of the Day

Well, hello there, price-matching. At some time during the wee hours of March 10, 2013, several sites across the Internet — except for the Apple Store — cut the price of the Harman Kardon CL headphones in half. They were $200, but now they’re $100. That’s an enormous price drop that’s rarely seen for headphones…

Evangelion and One Piece return to Cartoon Network’s Toonami

Good news, everybody! In one of the very few positive things that have happened for the American anime industry over the last five or so years, the Evangelion 1.11 movie will be airing this upcoming Sunday (March 17th) as part of “Toonami’s Birthday Party.” And that’s not all, because all-new episodes of One Piece will…

Japan Turned the One Surviving Tsunami Tree Into a Gigantic Sculpture

Two years ago today, Japan was ravaged by a horrible tsunami. And now, right on the anniversary of the disaster, there’s a new memorial to the people and things who lived through it: the “miracle tree” that survived the surge has now been converted in a sculpture. When the surge hit the coast in Rikuzentakata,…

Goodbye, Captain Rex: Lucasfilm calls an end to Clone Wars

While a whole host of new Star Wars projects are appearing on the horizon, at least one piece of Star Wars media will be coming to a close. Lucasfilm Animation has just announced that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be wrapping up to make room for new projects, but not before addressing some of…

The Very Best Teen Heroes in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Some of our favorite heroes are teenagers. Unlike the adults, they aren’t afraid to question authority — partly because they’re too young to have been compromised by it. They can see problems and solutions in the world around them. And for these young adults, every journey is a quest. That’s why teens are among the…

You Should’ve Seen the Fly Swatter That Made These Insect Wing Fans Possible

When it comes to design, it’s never a bad idea to see what Mother Nature has come up with first. After all, she’s had a lot more time to perfect her creations than we have. And what could be a better design to steal for a fan than an insect’s wing? It’s lightweight and effective…

In case you’re still in mourning, OS News just posted a 22,000 word, 55-page elegy to the late Palm, Inc. Wallow away.

The Most Ambitious Cathedral In Human History Might Finally Be Finished Thanks to Software

For three generations, some of the best architects and builders in the world have struggled to complete Antoni Gaudi’s masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. After 130 years, the massive cathedral in Barcelona might finally be within a decade or two of completion thanks to computers. La Sagrada Familia is the longest running architectural project in human…

5 Apps to Turn Your Phone into a Universal Remote

Controlling your home theater system used to be easy—you simply told your kid to turn the knob and presto, Honeymooners. But today’s home theater packed with feature-rich TVs, cable boxes, AV receivers, and streaming boxes—and all demanding their own remotes—there’s no way the little guy can keep up. Instead, replace your pile of remotes with…

Trouble in Bon Temps? True Blood loses another showrunner

Just how much trouble is HBO’s True Blood in? After Alan Ball stepped down as showrunner, Mark Hudis took control of the wacky town of Bon Temps and all its horny supernatural residents. But Hudis is calling it quits before he’s even finished filming the new season. According to The Hollywood Reporter Hudis is being…

In 1959, a pair of newlyweds spent their honeymoon in a fallout shelter

Forget Paris — after Melvin and Maria Mininson tied the knot on on July 12, 1959, they slipped into a cozy, 12-foot deep, 6-by-14-foot wide fallout shelter. There they spent a two-week honeymoon fielding calls from the media and trying to figure out how to open all those cans. MetaFilter points us to a handful…

Now we know who Peter Weller is playing in Star Trek Into Darkness

The Star Trek Into Darkness trailers have emphasized massive destruction, including terrorist attacks and crashing starships. But how does all of this fit together? And why haven’t we yet glimpsed the mysterious but vital character played by Peter Weller? A ton of footage was shown in Brazil, which gives away a lot of the movie’s…

Electronic Sensor Tattoos Can Now Be Printed Directly Onto Human Skin

Thanks to the same people that brought us the stick-on electric tattoo and stretchable battery, we’re now looking at a future of electronic sensors that can be printed directly onto human skin. At least for now, it seems like the sensors will be mainly used for medical purposes; they’ll be able to monitor skin hydration,…

A Fantastical Look at Fixing the Curiosity Rover

After spending roughly $2.5 billion to build the Curiosity rover and deliver it to Mars, there’s no way NASA would let something as trivial as a mechanical breakdown or software glitch stop its journey—not when we could just send up a repair-bot to fix it. Nicolas Hommel and Matthieu Findinier produced this bubbly animated short…

60 seconds of hot ninja-on-ninja action, courtesy of G.I. Joe: Retaliation

One of the first G.I. Joe movie’s (many, many) problems was that the best fight scene in the movie was between two 10-year-olds. While the Joes and Cobras were dicking around, little Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow beat the shit out of each other, and now it looks like their adult selves are ready for…

Sorry, astrologers — this is what it really means when a planet is in retrograde

You usually hear about a planet being “in retrograde” from astrologers, which might give you the impression that the term is mystical jargon. In fact, it does have an astronomical meaning. That meaning just happens to come from a rather outdated concept, when the Earth was still the center of the solar system. Today, it…

Clip-On Recorder Simplifies Everything But the Legality Of Recording a Phone Call

Recording a conversation on your smartphone isn’t as easy as you think it would be. Varying state-by-state laws make the legality a bit of a gray area, and if you don’t have access to the free Google Voice service, you’re going to have pay a monthly fee to capture a call. Or, put up with…

The Oreo Splitting Wars Escalate with Carnegie Mellon’s Brilliant Bot

In what is turning out to be one of the most entertaining marketing stunts of the past few years, Nabisco’s Cookie vs. Creme challenge is attracting all kinds of talented minds from across the country. Including robotic researchers from Carnegie Mellon University who’ve even drafted their advanced bot HERB into Oreo separating service. https://gizmodo.com/an-even-better-oreo-separating-machine-blasts-hot-creme-5988312 Surprisingly,…

The New Smartphone War: 7 Apple and Samsung Challengers

You might call it a lack of ambition. Or you could just call it being very pragmatic. At a recent roundtable with reporters in Tokyo, the head of Sony’s mobile business professed his desire to be the No. 3 player in smartphones behind Apple and Samsung. BlackBerry’s CEO said the same thing heading up to…

Watch a radio-controlled plane’s breathtaking journey into the stratosphere and back

While most weather balloon videos take objects into Earth’s upper atmosphere and film them plummeting down to Earth, David Windestål armed a radio-controlled plane with a camera, giving us a first-person view of the plane’s controlled (if chaotic) return trip. Windestål’s FunJet reached a height of 33,103 meters above sea level before his weather balloon…