Gotcha Gadgets – A book with a built in electronic mischief maker

Mark Frauenfelder 2:43 pm Wed Jun 10, 2015

Build Your Own Gotcha Gadgets comes with a multifunction electronic circuit, wires, and sensors that kids can use to build a variety of pranksterish devices: A cookie jar that sounds an alarm when the lid is removed, an electronic whoopie cushion, an intrusion detector, a fake lie detector, and more. Once you try a few projects from the book, it wouldn’t be hard to come up with other ways to use the components, both mischievous and mild.

Build Your Own Gotcha Gadgets

by Ben Grossblatt

Klutz press

2015, 32 pages, 0.5 x 10.2 x 12 inches (paperback)

$(removed) Buy a copy on Amazon

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

Send Pics: ripping, brutal, amazing novel about teens, sextortion, revenge and justice

Over the past decade or so, Lauren McLaughin (previously) has written a handful of outstanding YA novels, each dealing with difficult issues of gender, personal autonomy and the casual cruelty of teens, starting with Cycler (and its sequel, Re-Cycler) (a teenaged girl who turned into a boy for four days every month); Scored (a class-conscious surveillance dystopia); The Free (a desperate novel about a teen car-thief in juvie) and now, her best book yet: Send Pics, a gripping thriller about sextortion, high school, revenge and justice. READ THE REST
Abolish Silicon Valley: memoir of a driven startup founder who became an anti-capitalist activist

Wendy Liu grew up deeply enmeshed in technology, writing code for free/open source projects and devouring books by tech luminaries extolling the virtues of running tech startups; after turning down a job offer from Google, Liu helped found an ad-tech company and moved from Montreal to New York City to take her startup to an incubator. As she worked herself into exhaustion to build her product, she had a conversion experience, realizing that she was devoting her life to using tech to extract wealth and agency from others, rather than empowering them. This kicked off a journey that Liu documents in her new book, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, a memoir manifesto that's not just charming -- it's inspiring. READ THE REST
88 Names: Matt Ruff's MMORPG heist novel is "Snow Crash meets the King and I"

Matt Ruff is one of science fiction and fantasy's most consistently brilliant and innovative authors, whose recent work includes The Mirage (an incredible alternate history in which the Global War on Terror is kicked off when Christian crusaders from the blighted, tribal USA fly a plane into the United States of Arabia's Twin Towers in Dubai, giving the hawkish CIA chief Osama bin Laden the chance to launch the all-out war he's been champing for), and Lovecraft Country (an anti-racist reimagining of Cthulhu set in Jim Crow America where the real horror is white supremacy -- now being adapted for TV by Jordan Peele). In his new novel, 88 Names, Ruff adds to the canon of MMORPG heist novels (Charlie Stross's Rule 34, Neal Stephenson's Reamde, and my For the Win, to name three) with a unique take that he dubbed "Snow Crash meets The King and I." READ THE REST
Short Post, just one paragraph

Dessert cheesecake wafer bear claw fruitcake. Fruitcake chupa chups donut candy canes marzipan. Apple pie sweet roll tart chocolate cake macaroon marshmallow carrot cake gummi bears sweet. Pastry sugar plum… READ THE REST
Save 50% on a 1-year subscription to Dashlane's premium password manager

We all know vital information about ourselves and our private digital accounts can be compromised by cybercriminals. However, many would be frightened to know just how compromised they and their… READ THE REST
The Bite Helper removes the itch of a mosquito bite in seconds

While mosquitoes have certainly earned their title as the deadliest animal on earth, their impact on most of our lives is usually a lot less consequential. But even though they… READ THE REST