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Live Checking Credit Card Shows the Bad News in Real Time

Credit cards, by nature, dissociate us from our money at the price of convenience. But what if they were both easy to use and a means to promote responsible budgeting? The Live Checking credit card snared a red dot design award for good reason—it’s an excellent, feasible idea. A normal credit card is equipped with…

Final Kick-Ass Trailer Will Leave Boot Marks On Your Face

Watch our young heroes put a bullet in their enemies’ brains, with excellent marksmanship and a shower of blood. It’s the last red-band trailer for super violent film Kick-Ass, and they certainly didn’t skimp on the gore. Click to view Kick-Ass the movie adapted from the comic of the same name, will be out April…

Android Karenina Book Cover Mixes C-3PO And Sex

Quirk Classics, the makers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies have released their next cover for the cyborg inspired Android Karenina. The retold classic by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters, will be in stores June 8, 2010.

Ikea Lamp Used To Make Slide Projector To Bore Friends With

Don’t try and hide that Leksvik table from me, I can recognize Swedish wood from a hundred miles away. We all own Ikea furniture, it’s as certain as death and taxes. But not everyone makes a projector from a lamp. Instructables member Derte84 cobbled together his projector using just the Isbrytare lamp from Ikea, tape…

Eat Flying Imperial Fist From Super Shogun Stormtrooper!

It may not have appeared at this week’s New York Toy Fair, but Super7’s new Star Wars Super Shogun Stormtrooper may take the title of Greatest Toy Debut Of The Week for one simple reason: Spring-loaded Rocket Punch firing fist. The 24-inch tall stormtrooper figure mixes two 1970s pop phenomena – Star Wars and Shogun…

You Don’t Need An Agent To Be Pyr Books’ Next Superstar

Fast-rising SF publisher Pyr Books has opened the floodgates to unagented submissions of epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery and contemporary urban fantasy novels. (As Pyr’s blog entry says, this makes the publisher one of “those few publishers fool enough to accept unagented, unsolicited material.” Pyr’s Lou Anders adds: Last week we hired an editorial assistant slash slush…

The Secret World of Private BitTorrent Trackers

Somewhere on the web is the ultimate music site. It has virtually every album, EP and single ever released in a variety of high-quality formats with insanely fast download speeds. You’re probably not allowed in. The Pirate Bay is dead. So is TorrentSpy, MiniNova, Suprnova and many other public BitTorrent trackers. But the most savvy…

Will Asteroid Mining Destroy The Chinese Economy?

Instead of sending people to the Moon, the US space program is sending robots to the Asteroid Belt. When these robots discover metals in the Belt, how will it affect the economy of Earth? Discovery’s Robert Lamb reports on a lecture given by Vatican astronomer Guy J. Consolmagno, which was in part about the ethics…

iTunes, Executive Tongueslips and the Mythical 99-Cent TV Show

Apple’s had ambitious TV plans. Standing in the way, industry execs. Apple supposedly wants to offer subscriptions to packages for $30 a month, and to sell shows for a buck. Funny then, what CBS’s CEO said during an earnings call. https://gizmodo.com/more-information-on-apples-plan-to-kill-cable-launch-t-5432514 The relevant Q&A from CBS’s most recent earnings call, via Seeking Alpha’s full transcript,…

I guess I should have sent my story to Giz as well since it reminds me of what this tipster had to say. I happened to be in an elevator with Steve Jobs who appeared to be eating a small child, blood smeared across his face and spilling down his turtleneck in evanescent streaks. At…

Laptop-Spying School District Superintendent Covers Ass By Claiming Security Feature

Dr. Christopher W. McGinley, Superintendent of the Lower Merion School District—the district accused of invading students’ privacy by accessing their laptop’s webcams remotely—has sent an email to parents and guardians explaining why. Kind of: https://gizmodo.com/school-spies-students-through-their-laptop-cameras-5474614 ————— Forwarded message ————— From: Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:33 PM Subject: Email from Lower Merion School District…

Modular, Multi-Tab Power Strip Makes Competition Look Antiquated

There’s no special tech inside this power strip concept that could prevent it from coming to market tomorrow. Instead, simple, clever design makes an everyday product even better. Let me explain. The Multi-Tab strip, by designer Soon Mo Kang, does three things that most power strips don’t: 1. Modular construction means you can expand it…

Miyazaki’s Cat Bus Has Kittens

An iconic creature from Hayao Miyazaki’s legendary animated movie My Neighbor Totoro is the cat bus – a giant, flying cat whose belly is a soft, purring cab for riders. Now Nucleus Gallery is showcasing cat bus inspired art. Yes, artist Becky Dreistadt has given us this work, showing a cat bus who has had…

Paper War Depicts My Youth In Terms of Paper Airplanes

You don’t need to speak German to appreciate Papierkrieg (Paper War) by Makaio Tisu—you just need a sibling and/or one long-repressed paper airplane obsession. Two children face off, creating paper creations of increasing imagination. And it’s charming. [Neatorama]

Avatar’s Directors Cut Features 15 Minutes Of New Material, Plus “Video Game”-Like Deleted Scenes

It’s no real surprise that there will be at least three Avatar DVDs coming out. The regular release, a special edition, and a possible 3-D DVD. But even the “barebones” release will have plenty of never-before-seen footage. Eat that, Watchmen. MTV spoke with James Cameron about the upcoming Avatar DVD release, with the first one…

Steve Jobs, 1996: “Apple Will Be the Nike of Consumer Electronics”

With working conditions and security policy down Apple’s supply chain under serious fire, an Apple insider reached out to us. Apple’s blasé attitude toward its manufacturers’ labor practices, he says, is old news. https://gizmodo.com/investigate-apples-chinese-supply-chain-get-assaulted-5474160 Our tipster was a member of the Newton team when Steve Jobs made his return to Apple in 1996, with mixed…

A Better Way to Passcode Lock Your iPhone (At Your Own Risk)

The guys at 9to5Mac have put together a profile you can install on your iPhone using a corporate development kit that gives you an alphanumeric passcode lock—versus the standard 4-digit PIN-style lock. The settings profile’s easily removed if you don’t like it, but make sure you don’t lock yourself out of your phone by forgetting…

Chinese Hack Tracked Back to Two Universities and an IE Exploit

Investigators at the NSA have tracked the huge online attacks that Google used as their reason for leaving the Chinese market to two universities, one with ties to the Chinese military. https://gizmodo.com/google-refuses-to-continue-censoring-results-in-china-5446712 If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came…

DC’s New Bosses On Making DC The Best Again

Can DC Comics be #1 in the market again? Is Blackest Night key to the publisher’s future? We asked new DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee, as well as new DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. Congratulations on the new positions, but how does “co-publisher” actually work? Who’s handling what, and what are…

There’s More To SGU Than Closet Sex, Star Insists

Actor Brian J. Smith, who plays Lt. Scott on SGU, is tackling the criticism of his horny character and defending the rebooted franchise from fan outrage. You shouldn’t assume his character is a “sex-pot” or demand instant gratification, he insists. In an interview with Show Patrol, Smith who plays the religiously troubled Lt. Matthew Scott…