Are you a hardcore soccer fan and love the fact that the soccer season has just started in Europe? Then you might want to check out this pair of RC soccer boots. Yes, you won’t even need to wear it to move around, since each of these boots will feature a quartet of wheels under them, allowing you to steer it in just about any direction you want thanks to an included wireless remote. A quartet of AA batteries ought to last you through two halves of a soccer match, with half-time included. Not only that, a plastic scoop accessory has been included for beginners who have yet to get the hang of the game’s physics. At $76 thereabouts

I can’t talk about the extra New Man in Charge feature or some of the hidden details within the packaging itself—there’s a blacklight included just for the purposes of finding those secrets. But I can describe what’s in the box. There’s the Senet game played by you know who in Season 6, a little replica map of the island, an episode guide, a Black Rock diary entry, that blacklight and the 6 seasons worth of Blu-rays. It’s up to you to dig around inside the box to find hidden stuff. (I’ve only discovered one so far over the weekend, so I have some exploration to do.)

What I can say is that the Blu-ray transfer is pretty great looking, even for the extra features that they filmed separately from the show. I’ve always maintained that watching a show on Blu-ray is the optimal way to see it, because most broadcasts—even if they’re in HD—top out at 1080i. And even then, you’re often getting a compressed video stream with artifacting. With Blu-ray, you get all ten-eighty of the pees.

But if you’re curious as to whether or not the series is worth it, well, it is. There are some slow episodes/seasons that you can now fast forward or just skip entirely without the punishment of having to wait a week until the next one.

So if you want to go through the Lost journey again, or if you’re wondering what the hell everyone was so excited about these past six years, this is it. Blu-ray. Lost.

Now that’s a handy magic trick: Observe! This lot, empty but for the world’s largest augmented reality marker. Astonish! As a towering skyscraper flickers to life in its place. Wonder! At just how big a camera they must have needed.

The record-setting AR marker—Guinness-certified!—was dreamt up by architects at Königsberger Vannucchi, a Brazilian firm that wanted to give potential clients an augmented taste of what their proposed Fibrasa Connection development would look like. The result: a 360-degree, 3D rendering that beats the heck out of a pile of blueprints

Sermo, a members-only website for doctors, asked its doctor users to post about the strangest things they had ever pulled out of their patients. Then, they published some of the weirdest on their public blog. They are very weird, and probably mentally not safe for work. Here are some noteworthy ones, in ascending order of how much they disturbed me:

Allergist & Immunologist:

I once retrieved a plastic helicopter from a child’s nose.

General Surgeon:

5 pens, 2 permanent markers, 3 straws, 2 toothbrushes, 4 Oreo cookie wrappers. All at the same time from the stomach of a patient.

Urologist:

At our hospital recently the general surgeons removed from the stomach a bound and gagged barbie doll that the patient had swallowed.

Pathologist:

Large zucchini (rectum). The spiral from a spiral-bound notebook (male urethra). Pencil (male urethra). Cigarette lighter (stomach).

OH MY GOD I’m only going to consume smoothies for the next several months.

According to TechCrunch’s sources, Apple’s testing contactless payment-capable iPhones equipped with hardware from NXP Semiconductor, suggesting that such functionality is definitely something they’re working on for inclusion in the next iPhone.

In addition to contactless payment, which is kind of cool, TC points to patents that suggest Apple’s interests in using near field wireless for transferring files from device to device—say videos shot on an iPhone to a new AppleTV—which would be very cool.

In the hubbub following Mark Papermaster’s departure from Apple it came out that the iPhone 4 had likely entered prototype testing before he was even at the company, so if Apple is indeed planning on making the next iPhone near field capable, now’s the time they’d be testing them out.

Hey guy/gal reading Gizmodo instead of working: We’re hiring a tech writer in NYC. You need between 1-5 years experience, but more importantly you should be able to write like mad and know and love/hate/understand technology.

Full-time Responsibilities include:
• Writing morning posts. Fast, thoroughly and creatively.
• Taking meetings with companies. Quickly! More quickly than the PR people want you to!
• Reporting from the field. As fast and perfectly as humanly possible.
• Reviews

Skill as a tech writer needed, meaning fluency in technology discussion. Applicants should have an aptitude for reporting and feature writing and excellent conversational writing tone. Those with natural writing tones tending towards judicious use of fearlessness, relentlessness and wit under duress get extra bonus points. Please—no clowns who insist on writing a joke every sentence. Extra bonus points for those with experience outside the tech writing field and those who can write narratives. Also required: ability to take direction to the letter, spot stories early off the beaten path, generate ideas every day, and are a peach to work with. If you can’t take critical feedback and use it to better yourself and the site, do not apply. You need to be as reliable as the sun and the moon. We will put you through the ringer and make you 10x the blogger you wish you were.

Applicants should submit a resume in plain text emails, with a cover letter above it and somewhere in the doc a URL to a sample test blog which will be judged for timeliness, quality of writing, tech depth, breadth of topic/angles and general pizazz. (Magic fingers! Chin up!) Write 8 posts on a blog (try wordpress.com). Again, you will be judged on timeliness, so posting old news will cost you points here. Bonus points for mashing out a set of excellent posts quickly over a short amount of time and bonus points for mixing up hardcore tech with whimsical. Minus points for talking head posts about Facebook or Twitter or Web 2.0. Apply to jobs@gizmodo.com with “NYC writer” in the subject line. Do not apply without following these instructions.

Applications that are incomplete or incorrectly filed will be printed out on baby deer skin and incinerated after being laughed at. Applications sent to the wrong email address will be destroyed without being read.

Before applying, I recommend you read this entire post one more time and double check your entry, because I’ve already deleted 25 emails that failed to follow the instructions.

I’m still not sure exactly what to make of the Libretto W100, Toshiba’s dual-screen Windows 7 tablet. But if you’re the curious type, you can buy one now for $1,100.

That price still seems a little steep, given the specs—-1.2 GHz Pentium U5400 processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 62GB SSD, a USB port and a microSD slot—and the unclear use cases. But there’s no questioning that it’s one unique little gadget.

The W100 is a limited release for now, and you’re looking at a two to three week wait from order to delivery. Plenty of time to figure out what you’re going to use it for.

Apparently, the Volare is the first hair dryer to use a ball bearing design, which is supposed to keep things running smooth. It’s extremely lightweight, comes in Ferrari red (natch) or black and has a turbo button to boost airspeed. Its Ferrari designed AC V12 Engine packs 2,200 watts of power, can reach airspeeds of 80mph and can last for up to 2,000 hours. I’m no hairdrying expert, but those are some big numbers (typical hairdryers last 500 hours).

It’s expensive, retailing at around $400, but it’s way more affordable than a Ferrari. And if I can get a Ferrari attached to my name for $400, I might have to buy one.

Sure, hubless bicycles aren’t exactly new, but it just trips me out seeing a guy riding his hubless bicycle around. It’s like watching something that’s not supposed to happen, happen.

This spokeless bike, called the Lunartic Cycle, has a toothed belt drive and a large back wheel for speed and stability and a smaller front wheel for better maneuverability. It was designed by Luke Douglas and is an entry for the James Dyson Awards.

Captain Christian Balan shows up to the computer lab holding a spool of Cat-5 cable, eager to play tech support. If he can get the computers running in this relatively-prosperous town of 4000 people, he figures, it’ll pay dividends in goodwill. Maybe the platoon will get some tips about local insurgent activity.

His fellow soldiers are skeptical. You go to talk to the Afghans and you help them if you can, but all you typically get back is a laundry list of complaints and a Stop Snitching posture of silence when it comes giving up the bad guys.

So there’s some tension within this small unit, the 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company Sappers, 1-172 Cavalry, with whom Balan, the overall squadron’s communications chief, is riding along today to assist. The soldiers’ ultimate goal is to take down insurgents and stabilize the two districts of Parwan Province in which they operate. They understand that in a counterinsurgency campaign, that means listening to villagers’ gripes, shelling out for the odd development project and even sending out a makeshift geek squad every now and then. But here in Parwan, just outside Bagram Air Base, they’re not seeing enough return on their investment.

But then there’s Balan, a sunny Vermont National Guardsman who teaches digital forensics at Burlington’s Champlain College in civilian life. Since Tokchi requested computer help, he’s psyched that his techie skills may come in handy for 3rd platoon: “We finally get to do what we like to do!” If he wasn’t in Afghanistan, he tells me, he’d have gone to Def Con. Would’ve grown a beard and everything.

Now, Balan (pictured, above and left) is out in the baking heat, waving to kids who don’t wave back. He steps into the computer lab, a small cement box maintained by a social organization called the Bagram People Sultania Foundation. The room has nine black Dell desktops, looking maybe five years old. They’re running Windows XP Home Edition, got USB drives, optical mice – matter of fact, they wouldn’t be out of place in an American public school. Balan thought he’d be working on total dinosaurs. “I could teach off these!” he beams.

He takes off his helmet and armor and talks to an elderly man in the hope of finding out what’s wrong. His fellow geek, Specialist Steve Torrey, squats down and starts taking one of the towers apart to inspect. More good news: clean motherboards. As it turns out, the computers run fine; they just need power. The nearby generator that feeds the lab – something the U.S. helped provide – is out of juice. Balan and Torrey go back to the platoon’s trucks to get ten gallons of fuel.

Next door, Staff Sergeant Jon Bruce and Lieutenant Willie Spears are having more difficulty unlocking their problems. They’re parleying with the local leader, known as a malik, a leathery-faced guy in a white dishdasha named Abdul Habib. And it’s not going so well; the soldiers and the malik seem to be talking past each other. Bruce and Spears want information about insurgents in the area. Abdul Habib asks the troops to patrol more often, to keep the village safe. They remind him that they came by to fix the computers. Abdul Habib tells the soldiers that they promised to give him a second generator for the lab. “We didn’t promise that,” Bruce answers.

Bruce, a gruff 55-year old National Guardsman from Rutland, Vermont who reenlisted in 2007 after first serving in the Army in the late 70s and early 80s, knows these meetings are important. “You can’t just kick in doors and shoot people,” he says. And Bruce considers Abdul Habib one of his more trustworthy maliks. But in general, he doesn’t like these so-called “key leader engagements.” After serving in 2008 up north and in Helmand Province, he’s come to learn these chats are often frustrating wastes of time.

“You ask for intel,” Bruce says on the drive down, and what you typically hear back is, “‘There are no bad guys here. We do our own security.’ They clam right up. It’s like a broken record.’”

Recently, gunmen boarded a bus in the village shuttling locals to their jobs a few miles away at Bagram. The militants beat a bunch of them up and stole their gear. Bruce and Spears want to know what the malik knows. “We’re investigating,” is all Abdul Habib says at first. He’d rather discuss the wells that he wants dug.

Bruce’s team turns the subject back to the bus attack. “The issue is not actually there now. It’s for the elections,” the malik replies. Huh? They press further, even as Abdul Habib looks apprehensive. Finally, speaking in a code that the interpreter understands, the malik gives Bruce and Spears two names. One of the people he singles out is a candidate for parliament in next month’s elections. According to the malik, the would-be parliamentarian has 200 untrustworthy armed individuals under his command. “That’s a decent intel piece right there,” Bruce says, vowing to follow up. Abdul Habib adds another: last night, another guy loyal to the same candidate threw a hand grenade near the police station. “I’m concerned that this is escalating,” the malik says.

It could be what the platoon is after. But it’s also possible that Abdul Habib is trying to get the U.S. to rid him of a political rival. (I was asked not to name the candidate.) Bruce considers the malik trustworthy. Apparently it’s not the first time they’ve heard that this particular politician has been doing dirt. They’re ready to ride out.

A few miles down the road, in the smaller village of Dasht Opian, the next key leader engagement goes worse.

The platoon doesn’t just need tips about insurgents from the village – it needs remedial information, too. Its repository of data on Dasht Opian, Lieutenant Austin Barber, broke his hand in a gym accident a few weeks ago and had to be sent home. Spears is Barber’s replacement. Given his inexperience, the 42 year-old Illinois National Guardsman takes his cues from Sergeant Kenneth Whittington about what to ask the malik, a gold-toothed, even-tempered man named Abdul Raqeeb.

They ask Abdul Raqeeb apologetically to reiterate some basic information now that Barber is gone. Solicitously, Abdul Raqeeb replies that he’s the malik of five villages, one of three who represent a total of thirteen Parwan localities in the area. He gets up to excuse himself, heeding the platoon’s request to introduce a few of its female soldiers to his wife, the leader of a women’s shura.

Whittington considers it a positive sign, since the platoon hasn’t had the opportunity to speak with her before. But it leaves him and Spears in a room with random villagers who’ve streamed in to talk with and gawk at the soldiers. Out comes a Christmas list of demands. There’s no school in Dasht Opian, so local children go to nearby Charikar for their education. There aren’t any hospitals or clinics, either. One guy pipes up that the “biggest need is electricity,” pointing to the energy-efficient spiral light bulb on the malik’s ceiling. The village has two wells and one of them is nearly dry.

But if Whittington’s going to talk community development, he needs something in return. “Up the road, not long ago, we had a truck get rocketed,” he says. He’s referring to an ugly incident on July 24, when insurgents sent a rocket-propelled grenade through 2nd Platoon’s lead armored truck and sprayed the platoon with AK fire about two miles from the town, badly injuring six soldiers. Does anyone know anything about the attack?

A keyed-up farmer named Abdul Gafoor begins pawing at his brown shirt collar, trying to show off his neck. “I was shot a long time ago by the Taliban,” he says. “If I see anyone suspicious in my area, I will handle it. I’ll kick his ass before you know. But I’m not responsible for other villages.”

That’s not really what Spears and Whittington want to hear. They’d rather get information about the insurgents, not villagers vowing to take matters into their own hands. (Ironically, General David Petraeus might consider Abdul Gafoor a candidate for new effort to get villagers to provide their own security.) The team tries again, telling the men that if they give up intel on the Taliban, they can make some money.

“We will kill them with shotguns!” Abdul Gafoor proudly vows. And speaking of: could the Americans give him any guns?

Spears gestures to the interpreter. “Tell him his mouth and his phone are the biggest, best weapons he has.”

The malik returns, and team goes back and forth with him about maybe getting a job fair going in the area, followed by a long exchange in which Spears can’t quite get clear answers about which villages are under Abdul Raqeeb’s control. As everyone says their goodbyes, the unit’s interpreter – who’s been ribbed by the Tajik villagers for being half-Pashtun – concludes, “They’re not being honest. It’s pissing me off.”

As the team rides out, without much solid information about the insurgency, Bruce reflects that such treatment is pretty much par for the course. “We have some trustworthy maliks, but most are not. This is a land of illusions,” Bruce says. “I’ve got almost two years of my life invested in Afghanistan. The cultural ways, the moods out here are not comparable to the U.S. Most of the time, they’re not giving us the straight story.” Separating rumor from fact, he reflects, is “up to us.”

Balan, true to form, thinks it was a good day. He’s got big plans for the computer lab. He wants to network the computers so they can print to a single printer – maybe add some speakers, too; oh, and he’ll need printer cartridges – so he says he’ll write home to solicit donated equipment. After the platoon rolls back to Bagram, he hangs out in front of its office on some picnic benches and talks about the new software he wants to install. Maybe something about learning English. Or, hey: what about that Mavis Beacon program, the one that teaches you how to type?

Oh yeah, Bruce says – he remembers that program. Balan’s eyes indicate that he’s already musing about all the cool stuff he can introduce to the Tukhchi computer lab. Whether his tech upgrades will be useful as a counterinsurgency tool may require some more imagination.