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Swedish Pirate Party Runs Aground in Election
By Duncan Geere, Wired UK The Jolly Roger is flying at half-mast across Sweden today, after the country’s Pirate Party failed to secure enough popular support to enter parliament. The party, which supports copyright reform, free speech and opposes state surveillance, polled just one percent of the total vote. That falls far short of the seven percent [...]
09.20.10 -
How To Spot A Whitewash In Army’s Death-Squad Inquiry
According to Army investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, soldiers in the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of what’s now the 2nd Stryker Brigade hunted and killed Afghan civilians for sport. If this gruesome tale turns out to be true, then it means American soldiers in Afghanistan became something [...]
09.20.10 -
Weeping with an Eyepatch: No Pirates Elected to the Swedish Parliament
The Swedish Piratpartiet (Pirate Party) seemed almost fated to win. Sweden’s national elections took place Sunday, September 19???which just so happens to be “International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” And the party had already sent two MEPs to Brussels to represent Sweden in the European Parliament. The 2010 national elections looked like [...]
09.20.10 -
Firefox 4 to Drop Some CSS Vendor Prefixes
Woolly, the CSS sheep. Mozilla is busy committing changes, fixing bugs and finalizing the release of Firefox 4 beta 7. Among the smaller, but important changes in the next release is a change to some of Firefox 4’s CSS support: developers no longer need to use the -moz prefix for border-radius or drop-shadow. We’ve covered the pros [...]
09.20.10 -
Video: Football Stadium Switcheroo at Warp Speed
New Meadowlands Stadium has quickly become of the NFL’s architectural highlights, and as one time-lapse video shows, it takes an army of groundskeepers to keep it that way. To help foot its $1.6 billion price tag, NMS actually hosts two primary tenants: the New York Giants and the New York Jets. That means whenever one team [...]
09.20.10 -
Roads Go Ever On With Interactive Map of Middle-Earth
Check out this amazing interactive map of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, programmed by Kris Kowal. It’s like Google Maps for the Third Age of Arda; zoom, pan and even search (in English, Sindarin, Westron, et al.) for locations. The labels are in English or Sindarin (with the Tengwar alphabet, of course). The map is an ongoing project and [...]
09.20.10 -
Frame-Mounted Bike-Bags Dangle Between Your Legs
Psych’s bike-bag works a lot like a cowboy’s saddle-bags. It is split into two parts, and when you sling it over your top-tube each part hangs down one side, putting the load in right in the center of the bike for good stability. The bag actually attaches to the bike with ratcheted straps that go [...]
09.20.10 -
CrossFit Troops Fight For Their Right to Curl Until They Hurl
The military’s growing legions of CrossFit devotees have a message for the medical researchers worried about their extreme workouts: don’t get between us and our squat-thrusts. Danger Room reported last week that CrossFit, along with other “high-intensity” exercise programs like P90X and Insanity, would be undergoing a review by the Consortium for Health and Military Performance, [...]
09.20.10 -
The Future of Reading: Touchscreens On A Plane
I flew Virgin America for the first and only time in December 2008, from New York to San Francisco. When I used its interactive back-of-the-headrest food-and-media menu, the first button I pressed, naturally, was Books. “Coming soon,” it said. Two years later, when you use the menu, books are still “coming soon.” eBookNewser’s Dianna Dilworth recently [...]
09.20.10 -
Google Apps Gains Extra Security With Two-Factor Authentication
Companies migrating their e-mail and other cloud services over to Google Apps is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon, but there have been lingering doubts about whether making such a transition would put company security at risk. After all, there are numerous says for sysadmins to add extra layers of security for when users check their [...]
09.20.10
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Adaptive Traffic Lights Could Achieve ‘The Green Wave’
Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow [...]
09.20.10 -
Gallery: Crazy Space-Saving Designs for the Homes of the Future
In a future where our homes are so tiny that they become more like storage-closets for humans, even finding space for food could prove to be tricky. This is the challenge presented by the Electrolux Design Lab contest this year, which asked 1300 industrial designers to come up with home appliances for a future of [...]
09.20.10 -
The Event Continues TV’s Post-9/11 Conspiracy Obsession
Lost launched an entire mythology on the wings of an airplane disaster, and so did Fringe. Now comes NBC's new sci-fi entry The Event, which also milks post-9/11 anxieties about terror in the sky for dramatic tension. Last fall's similarly impressive opening salvo for FlashForward failed to sustain the series beyond a single season. Whether The Event survives or perishes, it will surely not be the last in a long line of conspiracy-themed TV dramas.
09.20.10 -
How To Draw a Totally Sweet Brain Maze
Problem statement: You know those 14-page kids’ maze books that sell for $4.99 on the spinning wire racks of your local drugstore? And do you know how long it takes your budding puzzle genius to solve the entire book? About 14 minutes. That’s $21.39 for an hour of entertainment. You’d be better off hiring a [...]
09.20.10 -
Daimler Debuts An Electric Truck
A new, all-electric ton light-duty 3.5 ton truck concept will be plying the roads of Hannover, Germany during this week’s IAA Commercial Vehicle Expo. The Fuso Canter E-Cell is built by Mitsubishi Fuso, a division of Daimler Trucks, and features batteries positioned in the chassis frame. Daimler envisions it as an ideal truck for urban centers, [...]
09.20.10 -
Is Facebook Planning A Phone? Who Knows. Should They? No.
It’s been quite a weekend over what Techcrunch thought would be a resonant story — though perhaps not in this way. It’s hard to say why exactly their piece on Facebook developing a branded phone caught so much fire and ire, but it might be because Facebook took the somewhat unusual step of denying it [...]
09.20.10 -
Review: Intel-Powered Convertible Classmate PC
The days of netbooks being only for the early adopters and for students with rich parents is long gone. With the XO laptop starting a new trend in portable computing for children and students, there are more affordable and child-friendly netbooks on the market all the time. One particularly remarkable example is the Intel-powered convertible Classmate [...]
09.20.10 -
Show Off Your Design Portfolio (Or Home Movies) With iPad
Apple’s iPad wants your backpack all to itself. Smartly-built applications let design pros leave their old portfolios at home, but there’s plenty more even we schlubs can use them to do. One advantage of a touchscreen tablet is that it’s an easy device for a user to prepare, then put in someone else’s hands. There’s [...]
09.20.10 -
Groups Build Parks From Parking Spaces
Around the world, parking spaces were transformed into miniature public parks and community centers on Friday, as the fifth annual Park(ing) Day challenged people to reimagine city streets without cars — if only until the meters ran out. Originally a project of San Francisco-based art and design studio Rebar, Park(ing) Day participants from Tucson to Tehran [...]
09.20.10 -
Dork Tower Monday
Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad. Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.
09.20.10
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The Value of iPhone Technology for Young Blind People
Over at his blog, Behind the Curtain, Austin Seraphin has written a fascinating post about when he and his mum went to purchase an iPhone. Austin details the benefits of Voice Control on the iPhone, how he uses it for all aspects of the phone, but most amazingly discusses how the iPhone and the Color [...]
09.20.10 -
Playstation ‘Move’ Controller is Like a Smartphone Inside
Sony might be playing catchup to the Wii with its “Move” motion-controller for the Playstation, but the tech packed inside makes the Wiimote look like a kids’ toy. More surprisingly, according to iFixit head-honcho Kyle Wiens, it is very easy to open up and repair. The Move is shaped like one of those personal massagers in [...]
09.20.10 -
Cellphones In The Classroom: Bad Idea, Inevitable, Or Both?
Last week was an interesting one in Canada, where Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty suggested that schools should be open to the idea of allowing students to use cellphones in the classroom. This idea runs contrary to what has been the general policy of requiring students to turn off their cellphones and smartphones during class, and seems [...]
09.20.10 -
Fly the Freaky Skies With Stiffs, Maggots and Acid
Anyone who flies has seen passengers trying to jam an obnoxiously large carry-on bag carrying God knows what into an overhead bin, or heard about odd critters in the cargo hold and bizarre things found in the seatback pocket. It happens far more often than you might think, but it this year’s been especially weird with [...]
09.20.10 -
Boil Buoy ‘Floats in the Pot, Rings When it’s Hot’
Quirky’s Boil Buoy is a floating chime that lets you know when a pot of water boils. It also has a pun in the name which only really works if you speak English with an English accent. “Buoy” is pronounced that same as “boy” on my side of the pond, instead of “boo-ey” in the US, [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Deft Visuals, Deep Gameplay Make Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll an RPG to Watch
TOKYO — Some may look at Tecmo Koei’s Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll, the latest in a series that has never seen the light of day in the West, and quickly pass it off another generic action role-playing game. But after all the mind-melting moe madness of Tokyo Game Show, I found the mature visuals [...]
09.20.10 -
Epic Win App Makes Your Life an iPhone RPG
Earlier this year I asked why games aren’t about winning anymore???they’re all about achievements. I read through all the comments and there were a lot of good points, both in defense of achievements and criticizing them. There were a few comments about the “real-life achievements” of the sort that Jesse Schelle mentioned in his DICE [...]
09.20.10 -
Frio Coldshoe Is a Hot, Handy Holder for Strobists
If you spent $500 on a Nikon SB900 Speedlight, you’ll remember how happy you were with this great flash. You’ll then remember the rage, followed by disbelief, when you discovered that it wouldn’t fit any of your existing lighting gear thanks to the stupid fat foot that Nikon put on it, a hot-shoe that would [...]
09.20.10 -
GeekDad Puzzle Of The Week: Fan Club Treasurer
With PAX excitement winding down and two Comic Cons getting ready to invade my home town in a few weeks I thought we could use a puzzle about the staple of any Con: The Dealers Room. We all know how easy it is to spend money in the dealers room at any Con. Well, at [...]
09.20.10 -
NSFW Burlesque Battle: Star Trek vs. Star Wars
For decades, the debate has raged in dorm rooms, sweaty convention centers and parents' basements: Which sci-fi franchise -- Star Wars or Star Trek -- rules the geek galaxy? Now the nerd fight has been taken to a whole new battleground.
09.20.10
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First Habitable Exoplanet Could Be Discovered by May
A new mathematical analysis predicts the first truly habitable exoplanet will show itself by early May 2011. Well, more or less. “There is some wiggle room,” said Samuel Arbesman of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, lead author of a new paper posted online and to be published in PLoS ONE October 4. His calculations [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Learning to Embrace Change in Bionic Commando Rearmed 2
TOKYO — Now that I’ve played Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, a sequel to the 2008 remake of a revered 1988 game, I find myself perfectly okay with the new jump button. It’s the other changes that will take time to accept. Fortunately for me, I’ve got a few months to get adjusted before the downloadable [...]
09.20.10 -
Chinese iPhone On Sale This Friday with Wi-Fi Intact
The iPhone 4 will be on sale in China this coming Saturday, September 25th. Unlike the Chinese 3GS, the new iPhone will have Wi-Fi. China had to wait two years after the iPhone’s initial launch before it was officially available there, although that didn’t stop a healthy black market form springing up. And after such a [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Marvel vs Capcom 3 Packs a Mighty Whallop
TOKYO — I’m a fighting game nut, so Marvel vs Capcom 3 was high on my list of games to see at the Tokyo Game Show this year. The full roster of characters has yet to be revealed, but here in Tokyo there were 18 to choose from, including Dormammu and Viewtiful Joe, who were announced [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Mobile Phone Final Fantasy Legends Is a 16-Bit RPG Revival
TOKYO — Final Fantasy Legends looks, sounds and plays like a role-playing game from the golden 16-bit years, back when tiny sprites raising their arms in victory was as much emotion as videogames required. Released on September 6 for Japanese iMode cell phones, Final Fantasy Legends: The Warriors of Light and Dark will be released episodically. [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Zack and Ombra Cribs From Layton’s Puzzling Playbook
TOKYO — There’s something oddly familiar about Zack and Ombra’s Amusement Park of Illusion, an upcoming adventure game for the Nintendo DS. Where have I seen a young man in a vaguely European city meet strangers and solve puzzles? Of course! The answer is: the Professor Layton series. The similarities between the two are painfully obvious. Sure, [...]
09.20.10 -
Hands-On: Sprinting Is Key in Crazy Gun Loco
TOKYO — As a developer so closely associated with Japanese role-playing games, Square Enix probably surprised Tokyo Game Show attendees with Gun Loco. Described as a “sprint action shooter,” the Xbox 360 game is loaded with muscular men carrying heavy weapons. If you’re picturing Gun Loco as a(nother) Japanese take on Gears of War, allow me [...]
09.20.10 -
Sept. 20, 1842: Dewar’s Fortune Is Scotched
1842: Sir James Dewar is born, but not into a vacuum. He will invent a vessel designed to make research into gases at extreme low temperatures easier, and it does. But the Dewar Flask also becomes the thermos bottle we use to this day, and — in a cruel twist of fate — its inventor [...]
09.20.10 -
Why the U.S. Should Send Troops (and Spooks) to the Congo
DUNGU, Democratic Republic of Congo — They arrive in the night like monsters. In northeastern Congo, in a swath of thick forest the size of some European countries, the apocalyptic Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group is a constant, foreboding presence. The LRA’s fighters — many of them kidnapped teens — murder, abduct, rape and pillage [...]
09.20.10 -
Download Trent Reznor’s Social Network Sampler for Free
Can’t wait to hear Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch’s soundtrack for The Social Network? Get an advance listen with this five-track free music sampler from the upcoming movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the social site’s beginnings. “This is what Atticus and I have been working on for the last few months,” Reznor said in [...]
09.19.10
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Facebook’s Virtual Currency Push Hints at Micro-Payments Battle
Facebook is making a play to become the dominant player in virtual currency — the funny money you use to everything from digital magazines to Farmville turnips. It’s already a billion-dollar business in which Facebook, the world’s largest social network, will face stiff competition from other behemoths like Apple, Google and PayPal. Facebook already has a [...]
09.19.10 -
Top 5 Great Comic Book Pirates! (GeekDad Wayback Machine)
In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I made a list of my favorite comic book pirates. Counting down from five to one…. 5. Pirate Batman. I repeat: Pirate. Batman. 4. B??lit. This female pirate was created by Robert E. Howard for his Conan of Barbarian stories but I remember her best from the comics by [...]
09.19.10 -
5 Fun Piratical Projects for Landlubbers (GeekDad Wayback Machine)
Talking like a pirate is a lot of fun in and of itself, but ??? let’s be honest ??? it gets a little annoying if you really do it all day long. So, what other things can you do to act like a pirate without necessarily talking like one? Glad you asked. 1. Bury some treasure [...]
09.19.10 -
Ex-Child Prostitute Sues Village Voice Over Sex Ads
A teenage child trafficking victim has filed a lawsuit against Village Voice Media, for knowingly allowing her pimp to post ads for her “services” on the popular backpage.com. The pimp, Latasha Jewell McFarland, has already pleaded guilty to prostitution charges, but the victim (going by M.A. in the complaint, as she is still a minor) [...]
09.18.10 -
Trailer: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp Spark The Tourist Thriller
As femme fatale Elise, Angelina Jolie goes with a British accent to insult and ensnare Johnny Depp's title character in romantic spy drama The Tourist. The trailer shows Jolie putting a chic spin on her familiar in-control persona, but Depp's hapless Frank character snags the clip's best line when he ranks attempted murder charges in comparison to bad room service.
09.18.10 -
Twitter’s Missing Feature: An “Anti-RT”
My colleague Mike Calore has done a great hands-on with the new Twitter, which I’m also lucky enough to have received early. One feature that immediately stands out, though: it’s infinitely easier to manage who you follow. It is one, long scroll, no page turning, and one click to send someone into the cornfield. I [...]
09.18.10 -
Video: Keira Knightley Plays Fairy Godmother in Weird Suicide Brothers Short
Her big movie this month is dystopian drama Never Let Me Go, but Keira Knightley also pops up in short form as the Fairy Godmother in The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers.
09.18.10 -
Q-Games Talks PixelJunk Shooter 2, Teases Future Projects
TOKYO — Q-Games, the Kyoto-based developer of the popular PixelJunk series of games on PlayStation 3, was on hand at the Tokyo Game Show to show the press its new game PixelJunk Shooter 2, a sequel to its 2009 download. This new installment will follow your tiny ship on an escape from inside a giant creature [...]
09.18.10 -
Six Reasons Why I’m Not On Facebook, By Wired UK’s Editor
“David, you’re sounding like an old dude!” Matt Flannery, who runs social-lending website Kiva, couldn’t understand when I explained that, no, I wouldn’t be keeping in touch with him via Facebook. “What are you worried about?” he teased in a break at the PINC conference in Holland. “Only old guys get worked [...]
09.18.10 -
Mega Man Universe Features Hideous ‘North American’ Mega Man
TOKYO — Mega Man Universe has a new playable character, but one that’s a longstanding part of Mega Man lore. One of the five different playable characters in the new Mega Man game shown at Tokyo Game Show is “Mega Man Ver. NA,” pictured above. Remember him? If not, perhaps this will refresh your memory: Yes, it’s [...]
09.18.10
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Hands On: 3rd Birthday a Shooteriffic Sequel to Parasite Eve
TOKYO — The 3rd Birthday packs more nonstop action than one might expect from the followup to Parasite Eve. The original two games, released for the PlayStation a little over 10 years ago, straddled genres. But they were generally referred to as a role-playing game and survival horror, respectively. Based on the horror novel from Hidaeki [...]
09.18.10 -
Hands-On: Solatorobo Summons Fuzzy Memories of Tail Concerto
TOKYO — If you believe the rumors, Solatorobo is the sequel to a game that was never supposed to have one. In a corner of its Tokyo Game Show booth this weekend, Bandai Namco is showcasing a playable demo of Solatorobo, a Nintendo DS action role-playing game that will go on sale in Japan on October [...]
09.18.10 -
Trailer: Catfish Swims Into Murky Waters of Social Networking
runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience610757203001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences(); Mystery movie Catfish deals with social networking, online dating and … something mysterious. Here’s the synopsis from Rogue Pictures: Nev, a 24-year-old New York City photographer, is contacted on Facebook by Abby, an 8-year-old girl who asks permission to paint one of his photographs. When she sends him her remarkable painting, Nev begins an [...]
09.17.10 -
T-Mobile Censoring Text Messages
A mobile-marketing company claimed Friday it would go out of business unless a federal judge orders T-Mobile to stop blocking its text-messaging service, the first case testing whether wireless providers can block text messages they don’t like. EZ Texting claims T-Mobile blocked the company from sending text messages for all of its clients after learning that [...]
09.17.10 -
Twitter’s Evan Williams Hosts a Twitter Q&A;
Twitter has no plans to launch its own official desktop client, but it is looking into adding a conversational view on its newly announced New Twitter web platform to help make sense of back-and-forth tweet exchanges. No, the company won’t increase the number of characters allowed in a post. And yes, you will get to see the [...]
09.17.10 -
Tweet of the Day: Steve Jobs Tells J-School Student to ‘Leave Us Alone’
In a purported e-mail exchange published by a gossip blog, famously mercurial CEO Steve Jobs told an innocent journalism student to buzz off. That’s the story featured in today’s Tweet of the Day, which comes from our ??friends at Valleywag (Gawker Media): “Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Student??http://gawker.com/5641211/.” According to the author of [...]
09.17.10 -
Microscopic College Logo Displays Big School Spirit
School spirit comes in all sizes, it seems. An engineer from the University of Utah has created what is possibly the world’s smallest college logo. Measuring just 70 microns across, the medallion is gold-on-silicon and was made by Randy Polson, a senior optical engineer in the Physics and Astronomy department, using lithium-beam lithography. Essentially, Polson used [...]
09.17.10 -
Best of Show: iTunes Icons Redesigned by Wired Readers
Wired.com readers weren’t kidding when they complained that they didn’t like Apple’s new iTunes icon. We received over 100 submissions for our “Redesign Apple’s Ugly iTunes Icon” contest, with a ton of impressive mockups. We also asked readers to vote for their top picks, and the crowd favorite comes from Ian Houser, whose icon “iTunes Digital [...]
09.17.10 -
Intel Threatens to Sue Anyone Who Uses HDCP Crack
Intel threatened legal action Friday against anybody who uses its proprietary crypto key — leaked on the internet — to produce hardware that defeats the so-called HDCP technology that limits home recording of digital television and Blu-ray. “There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and [...]
09.17.10 -
Video: Iron Man 2 Blu-ray Dissects War Machine
runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience610165540001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences(); The weaponized armor worn by Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2 lacks the subtlety of Shellhead’s more sophisticated metal suit. “War Machine’s pretty much geared to blowing you away,” says Marvel Comics executive editor Ralph Macchio in the exclusive clip above from “Ultimate Iron Man: The Making of Iron Man 2,” a featurette [...]
09.17.10
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Blotto Video: Sci-Fi and Fantasy’s Biggest Drunks
Because in space, no one can hear you barf. [via Screen Junkies] Follow us on Twitter: @lewiswallace and @theunderwire. See Also: Wired???s Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time ??? Pre???Star Wars Wired's Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time ??? Star Wars and After Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds
09.17.10 -
Film School Talks Fission, Fave Flicks
San Francisco mood-rock band Film School's new record, Fission, is equally stacked with sunny atmospherics and dark electronica. Just don't call it "cinematic."
09.17.10 -
Most Dangerous Week Ever (Yom Kippur Edition)
As your pious defense bloggers prepare to atone for our many sins this year, we look solemnly at the transgressions we made committed just in the last week. We asked some impertinent questions. Can escalating drone strikes bring the Afghanistan war to a close? Should the Army act more the State Department??? Can Darpa really help [...]
09.17.10 -
NBA Star Sued for Computer Hacking, Racketeering
Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal’s one-time IT technician has sued his former employer, alleging invasion of privacy, racketeering and conspiracy to plant child pornography on his personal computer. According to a lawsuit filed in Florida Circuit Court in early August — and just made public this week by RadarOnline.com — Shawn Darling worked as O’Neal’s personal tech [...]
09.17.10 -
Wired.com’s Guide to Driving in Kabul
Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Zach Rosenberg recently returned from four months in Afghanistan, where, among other things, he learned how to navigate the streets of the country’s capital in a battered Toyota Corolla. So you??re in Kabul and need to get somewhere, huh? Oh sure, you can take a cab. There are taxis everywhere, they’re cheap and [...]
09.17.10 -
Ex-General Declares Total War on Defense Secretary
Defense Secretary Robert Gates came into the Pentagon like C.C. Sabathia entered Yankee Stadium. Not only did he help revitalize a military beaten down by Iraq, Afghanistan and Donald Rumsfeld, he focused on fundamentals, like slashing seemingly-permanent waste. Accordingly, he’s gotten a lot of good press, ourselves definitely included. So it falls to Charlie Dunlap [...]
09.17.10 -
Speed: 500 MPH. Altitude: 50 Feet. Feeling: Amazing.
For pilots seeking a speed fix, this weekend’s Reno Air Races is the place to be. From the tiny Formula 1 class racers that lap the short course at more than 250 mph to the anything-goes unlimited class where pilots go more than 500 mph just 50 feet off the ground, going fast is [...]
09.17.10 -
Why Cellphone Talkers Are So Grating
They???re everywhere ??? yammering on the subway, yukking it up on sidewalks, yakking away in restaurants. It???s the invasion of the cellphone-slinging, super-annoying attention snatchers! Cellphone users irritate so mightily because their background chatter forcibly yanks listeners??? attention away from whatever they???re doing, says psychology graduate student Lauren Emberson of Cornell University. Overhearing someone spewing intermittent [...]
09.17.10 -
Genndy Tartakovksy’s Sym-Bionic Titan Is a Mecha Mash
After revitalizing American animation with anime-inspired knockouts like Samurai Jack and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the Russian-born cartoon brainiac is crashing mecha convention with his new show, an action-packed sci-fi yarn about aliens hiding out in Illinois.
09.17.10 -
Baby Lion Cubs Get First Vet Exam
The four baby lion cubs that we have been following on the lion cub webcam since they were born at the Smithsonian National Zoo August 31 got their first physical exam today, and their first mug shots. All four cubs appear to be female, although it is hard to tell at such a young age. They [...]
09.17.10
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ABC’s Ingenious App Uses Sound to Sync iPad, TV???
The video demonstration for ABC’s new iPad app is hokey, derivative, a bit cheesy, and doesn’t stop playing when you want it to — as one might expect from a big television network strutting its online stuff — so we’re not embedding it here. But the television-syncing iPad app it advertises is nothing short of [...]
09.17.10 -
6 Surprising New Tyrannosaurs Discovered This Year
See Also: First-Gen T. Rex Was No Bigger Than You Claws, Jaws and Spikes: The Science of the Dinosaur Arsenal Dinosaur Fossil Reveals True Feather Colors Video: Model Dinosaur Tests Four-Winged Flight Vote for Your Favorite Dinosaur Illustration Citation: “Tyrannosaur Paleobiology: New Research on Ancient Exemplar Organisms.” By Stephen L. Brusatte, Mark A. Norell, Thomas D. Carr, Gregory M. Erickson, John [...]
09.17.10 -
Rare ‘Asian Unicorn’ Caught in Laos
One of the rarest creatures on the planet has been sighted in Laos. The saola, which has been dubbed the ‘Asian unicorn’ despite being double horned, hasn’t been photographed since 1999. The individual pictured above was captured and taken back to a small village, where it unfortunately died in captivity several days later. The saola first [...]
09.17.10 -
Behind the Scenes: Coding ‘The Wilderness Downtown’
Google’s recent collaboration with Arcade Fire, dubbed The Wilderness Downtown, yielded an in-depth interactive experience for the band’s single “We Used To Wait” that just might point to the future of the music videos. The experiment relied heavily on HTML5 and quite a bit of clever JavaScript to pull off one of the better interactive [...]
09.17.10 -
Senate May Finally Sink Marines’ Swimming Tank
Two defense contractors, AEgis Technologies and the Carley Corporation, celebrated their good fortune yesterday. The Marine Corps awarded them a four-year, $36 million contract to produce a training regimen for one of its top priorities for the future: the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a $12-billion tank that swims Marines from a big ship to an enemy-controlled [...]
09.17.10 -
Diaspora Unveils its Open Social Code
The developers behind Diaspora, the social network aiming to build an open source Facebook clone, and maybe steal some of the giant’s thunder, have released their first bit of actual code. The goal behind the Diaspora project is to create a social network that puts users in charge of their own data. As the developers [...]
09.17.10 -
Military Fitness Gurus Tell Troops: You’re Too Flabby For CrossFit
More troops than ever are flipping tractor tires, lobbing 50-pound kettle bells and conquering the Three Bars of Death in an effort to become “tougher, faster, hard-bodied freedom fighter[s].” But some of them are also working out until they puke, faint or suffer permanent organ damage. Now, a team of medical researchers have a message [...]
09.17.10 -
Track Afghan Election Fraud Without Going To Afghanistan
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to anticipate that Saturday’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan will be marred by fraud. The Free and Fair Election Foundation, an independent Afghan poll-watching group, recently documented 583 instances of pre-voting electoral violations in a scant 40 days. And if you’d like to do a little DIY election analysis, far [...]
09.17.10 -
Tremors Unfairly Maligned? Cheesy Sci-Fi Classics, as Picked by You
Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire. See Also: Piranha 3D's Painful Predecessors: The 24 Cheesiest Movies Ever Made Best Exploitation Flicks: Machete's Over-the-Top Ancestors
09.17.10 -
From An Irish Matchmaker To The Best Road Ever
Driving around the world as opposed to flying is meant to negate jet lag and culture shock. But you can’t drive across the Atlantic, so the pond is one of two bodies of water we must cross by plane on our round-the-world drive. The culture shock of Big Apple to the Emerald Isle is huge. NYC [...]
09.17.10
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Sept. 17, 1908: First Airplane Passenger Death
1908: During flight trials to win a contract from the U.S. Signal Army Corps, pilot Orville Wright and passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge crash in a Wright Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia. Wright is injured, and Selfridge becomes the first passenger to die in an airplane accident. After Wilbur and Orville Wright made their historic first-ever airplane [...]
09.17.10 -
Alt Text: Videogame Wisdom You Can Apply to Real Life
A University of Rochester study indicates that people who play action-packed videogames possess better decision-making skills. But, of course! My own years of playing videogames have made me much better at making decisions. For instance, if I have some sort of household task where I could do a quick, slapdash job that will have to be [...]
09.17.10 -
As Other Tech Giants Release Products, Yahoo Announces What It Is
In the last week, Google introduced instant search, Microsoft finally released a modern browser and Twitter released a revamped website intended to be a one-stop shop for what’s new for you. Yahoo responded by calling reporters to its headquarters in Sunnyvale and laying out hundreds of yards of purple carpet leading to a demo room where [...]
09.16.10 -
Man Gets 6 Years in Prison for Laundering $2.5 Million for Carders
A California man who helped funnel stolen cash to a global network of hackers and carders was sentenced Thursday to 6 years in prison for conspiracy to launder money.??? Cesar Carranza, 38, also known as “uBuyWeRush,” ran a legitimate business selling liquidation and overstock merchandise online and from three California stores. But, according to an indictment (.pdf), [...]
09.16.10 -
Shattered Marble Map Mystifies Puzzlers
Think that 800-piece clown puzzle in your basement might be missing a few pieces? You’ve got nothing on this ancient mystery, as Jane Doh describes. Ancient Roman Map Defies Puzzlers for Centuries, by Jane Doh An unintentional jigsaw puzzle made of marble, over two millennia old, and missing most of its pieces has defied scholars and puzzle-solvers [...]
09.16.10 -
Spoiled Space Slacker Rules in Warlord of Io
It’s not easy to create an outer space saga that treads fresh extraterrestrial turf, but author/illustrator James Turner is giving it a shot. His new sci-fi graphic novel Warlord of Io, released last month, offers up a coming-of-age story about a 25th-century slacker named Zing who suddenly takes charge of an empire ravaged by tiki space [...]
09.16.10 -
Open Source Facebook Contender Releases Code to Public
Diaspora, an open source challenger to Facebook, hit its first milestone Wednesday, releasing code for fellow hackers to test drive and improve. The code is not ready for general use, and you can’t go to Diaspora.com to use it. Instead, those with programming skills can install it on their servers, test the code, and work on [...]
09.16.10 -
Lawsuit Targets Mobile Advertiser Over Sneaky HTML5 Pseudo-Cookies
A New York mobile-web advertising company was hit Wednesday with a proposed class action lawsuit over its use of an HTML5 trick to track iPhone and iPad users across a number of websites, in what is believed to be the first privacy lawsuit of its kind in the mobile space. The company, Ringleader Digital, uses HTML5’s [...]
09.16.10 -
X Prize Winners Look Weird … With Good Reason
WASHINGTON — Let’s start with the obvious. The three winning Progressive Automotive X Prize vehicles announced today certainly look a tad strange. One is a banana-yellow enclosed motorcycle from Switzerland. Another is a neon-green coupe that resembles a well-rubbed bar of Irish Spring. And the big $5 million winner, the inspired creation of a startup company [...]
09.16.10 -
Moon Crater Map Reveals Early Solar System History
The first complete topographic map of the moon and its craters has revealed details of billions of years of bombardment by asteroids, and the early history of our solar system. Among other things, the map confirms theories of an onslaught of massive asteroids around 3.9 billion years ago that likely evaporated any water present on [...]
09.16.10
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Video: See Sci-Fi Movie Jim’s Designer-Baby Pitch
In this new clip from DNA drama Jim, the title character (played by Dan Illian) listens to the sales pitch from a designer-baby saleswoman.
09.16.10 -
On Volleyball Court, Women Better Off Digging
Researchers at Brigham Young University found that for female players, the dig is king, more consistently leading to scoring than by concentrating on power-driven serves. Conversely, male players (with their greater upper-body muscle mass) are better off perfecting their serve technique and location. A full season’s worth of data was taken in 2006 from a Division [...]
09.16.10 -
Clouds Are Shaped by Where They’re From
Scientists’ view of clouds is clearing up. Two new studies show that cloud-forming particles in the atmosphere, called aerosols, look different and make different clouds depending on their origins. One study found that in one of the most pristine environments on Earth — above the treetops of the Amazon Rainforest — clouds mostly come from gas [...]
09.16.10 -
Take a Tour of the New Twitter
Twitter launched a full redesign to its website Tuesday, showing off changes that lead Twitter.com away from its humble stream-of-updates past and towards a more interactive, app-like future. The new Twitter went live to a select few users Tuesday afternoon and began rolling out to everyone else Wednesday. If you don’t see it yet, you will [...]
09.16.10 -
Automotive X Prize Winner Gets 102.5 MPG
It may look odd, but the ultralight Edison2 Very Light Car gets 102.5 mpg, it does so with good old-fashioned internal combustion and it’s just won the Progressive Automotive X Prize. The Very Light Car was among three innovative, if unusual, automobiles that shared the $10 million pot the X Prize promised to whomever built a [...]
09.16.10 -
A Guide to Internet Explorer 9’s HTML5/CSS 3 Support
If you’d like to know exactly where Internet Explorer 9 stands on support for emerging web standards in its current beta release form, Microsoft has put together a comprehensive list of all the supported HTML5 and CSS 3 features in IE9. The document notes that IE 9 is still a beta release, and the list [...]
09.16.10 -
Not Even Death Can Stop Congress’ Pork King
In death as in life, no one can stop the late Congressman Jack Murtha from spending your tax money on projects in his Pennsylvania district in the name of national security. The former defense-appropriations chief in the House — who famously remarked, “If I’m a little corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district” — [...]
09.16.10 -
France Pledges Full Cooperation in Armstrong Doping Probe
The cloud over Lance Armstrong’s enduring Tour de France triumphs shows little signs of clearing, as French anti-doping authorities committed today to providing the US Food and Drug Administration with urine samples taken in 1999 from Armstrong. These “B” samples reportedly contain levels of synthetic erythropoietin, a naturally produced hormone that helps with red blood [...]
09.16.10 -
How Mass Migration Might Have Evolved
Just a few small changes in the social behaviors of even solitary animals may set in motion an evolutionary cascade ending in massive, globe-spanning migrations, suggests a study of migration’s origins. Such migrations — caribou across the Arctic and wildebeest across the Serengeti, birds and butterflies over oceans — are among nature’s most beautiful and mystifying [...]
09.16.10 -
Hubble Captures Cosmic Ice Sculptures
This water-color-esque image captures hot stellar winds carving away at pillars of cold gas, like ice sculptors wielding torches. These one-light-year-tall pillars of cold hydrogen and dust are located 7,500 light-years away in the Carina Nebula. Violent stellar winds and powerful radiation from massive stars are sculpting the surrounding nebula. Inside the dense structures, new stars [...]
09.16.10
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Six Reasons Why I’m Not On Facebook, By Wired UK’s Editor
09.18.10 -
Tweet of the Day: Steve Jobs Tells J-School Student to ‘Leave Us Alone’
09.17.10 -
Ex-Child Prostitute Sues Village Voice Over Sex Ads
09.18.10 -
Best of Show: iTunes Icons Redesigned by Wired Readers
09.17.10 -
Facebook’s Virtual Currency Push Hints at Micro-Payments Battle
09.19.10 -
Microscopic College Logo Displays Big School Spirit
09.17.10 -
NSFW Burlesque Battle: Star Trek vs. Star Wars
09.20.10 -
Intel Threatens to Sue Anyone Who Uses HDCP Crack
09.17.10 -
Sept. 20, 1842: Dewar’s Fortune Is Scotched
09.20.10 -
First Habitable Exoplanet Could Be Discovered by May
09.20.10 -
Speed: 500 MPH. Altitude: 50 Feet. Feeling: Amazing.
09.17.10 -
Video: Iron Man 2 Blu-ray Dissects War Machine
09.17.10 -
NBA Star Sued for Computer Hacking, Racketeering
09.17.10 -
Is Facebook Planning A Phone? Who Knows. Should They? No.
09.20.10 -
Mega Man Universe Features Hideous ‘North American’ Mega Man
09.18.10 -
Rare ‘Asian Unicorn’ Caught in Laos
09.17.10 -
Twitter’s Evan Williams Hosts a Twitter Q&A;
09.17.10 -
T-Mobile Censoring Text Messages
09.17.10 -
Why the U.S. Should Send Troops (and Spooks) to the Congo
09.20.10 -
Genndy Tartakovksy’s Sym-Bionic Titan Is a Mecha Mash
09.17.10
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