Kid-Tested: Three Projectile Weapons for Indoor Warfare
Editor’s note: Zing Toys sent us several boxes of its newest office weapons this week. We took advantage of “Take Our Children to Work Day” to kid-test the toys with the children of various Wired employees. These are their unedited reactions. Z-X Crossbow ($26) “I think it’s awesome and I really want it. It shoots hecka far and it sticks to stuff.”...
Read MoreGet Your Astronomy On With This Serious Scope
Photo: Spencer Lowell Even a basic telescope can deliver clear views of celestial regulars like Jupiter and its moons. But for NASA-worthy sights of, say, the Crab Nebula, you need serious gear—and serious coin. Enter the Meade MAX 20″ telescope. Its optics are coated with nanothin layers of proprietary materials that help guide every cosmic photon into your eye or camera. And the focal...
Read MoreTSA’s Prying Eyes Won’t Look Twice at This Laptop Bag
The security screening procedure at the airport typically provides about as much enjoyment as a graduate-level macroeconomics lecture, so it was comforting to know I had one less hassle when I approached the conveyor belt at the TSA checkpoint the last time I flew: I didn’t have to remove my 15-inch MacBook from my backpack. My notebook was stowed inside a Big Ben backpack, which is made...
Read MoreHocus Focus: Superfocus Glasses Are OphthalMagic for Muggles
If you are a long-time Wired subscriber, this is going to be hard for you to read — literally. For the graying set that thinks these glasses are more Thomas Dolby than Harry Potter, reading anything is more difficult, because of presbyopia, the gradual inability of the eye to focus due to age. Even if you never wore glasses before, all of a sudden — or around age 45 — you are...
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