-
Microsoft Tarred as Tyranny Abettor as Google Asks Feds to Promote Net Freedom
Google is urging the U.S. government to make net censorship a part of its trade and diplomatic negotiations, even as it holds out hope that China does not start blocking its uncensored Hong Kong servers, where Google.cn users have been diverted since Monday. Not unexpectedly, Google came in for heavy congressional praise Wednesday at a hearing [...]
03.24.10 -
Beautiful Websites: Pictory’s Ode to Spring
There’s currently a debate raging in the publishing world over whether the web is robust enough of a platform to present magazine-like stories properly — paginated content heavy on photography, design and stylized type. The current popular opinion is that the web is not up to snuff, and thus the scramble towards dedicated readers and [...]
03.24.10 -
Hello, and Welcome to Movie Phone: Mobile Apps Duke It Out
Video rental companies made big moves this week in the race to deliver movies to phones. But as compelling as thought of a movie in your pocket alone may be, this isn’t just about delivering content to handset. The companies vying for your mobile movie dollars want to tie you to an ecosystem they hope [...]
03.24.10 -
Mercedes Builds a Sweet Gullwing For the Track
We knew that Mercedes was serious about performance with the new AMG SLS, aka, “The Gullwing,” but this is really serious. Some sweet pics and a few details have come out of Germany showing Mercedes will soon roll out a race-ready version of the high-flying neo-retro ride for the GT3 class. Porsche, et al, watch out. The [...]
03.24.10 -
ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws
The United States is nudging the international community to develop protocols to suspend the internet connections of customers caught downloading copyrighted works, according to a leaked draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The United States is leading the 2-year-old, once-secret negotiations over the so-called ACTA accord. The Jan. 18 draft, about 56 pages and labeled “confidential,” [...]
03.24.10 -
Developers, Websites Respond to iPhone App Payola Story
The iPhone community has reacted strongly to the news that some app review sites have pay-to-play policies. Wired.com last week reported on payola practices prevalent among several websites dedicated to reviewing iPhone apps. At least two authors of one site, TheiPhoneAppReview.com, recently required money from iPhone developers in exchange for reviews of their apps. Those demands were [...]
03.24.10 -
Front Mission: Evolved Creators Assuage Fan Fears
Square Enix has a new Front Mission game in the works, but the forthcoming Front Mission: Evolved — an action-oriented, third-person shooter — promises to be a far cry from the traditional turn-based mech warfare that gamers have come to love. The long-running Front Mission series was created by Toshiro Tsuchida in 1993. The games, [...]
03.24.10 -
9 SXSW Bands That Blew Us Away Unexpectedly
AUSTIN, Texas — The best thing about the South by Southwest music festival is the nonstop blur of bands from around the world. Even with thousands of musicians converging on the so-called Live Music Capital of the World, it can be difficult to catch a truly transcendent show — if nothing else, the sheer volume [...]
03.24.10 -
Military Helicopters May Get Gunshot Location System
Military helicopters have sophisticated electronic countermeasures to detect and defend against surface-to-air missiles, by jamming or fooling the seekers that guide the missiles to target. Now the Pentagon’s far-out research arm wants to take things a step further, by protecting against unguided — but equally dangerous — small arms fire. In testimony yesterday, Regina Dugan, the [...]
03.24.10 -
DNA Reveals New Hominid Ancestor
A new member of the human evolutionary family has been proposed for the first time based on an ancient genetic sequence, not fossil bones. Even more surprising, this novel and still mysterious hominid, if confirmed, would have lived near Stone Age Neandertals and Homo sapiens. “It was a shock to find DNA from a new type [...]
03.24.10
-
Report: Warner Bros. Developing Spy Hunter Movie
Moviegoers may be hearing the Peter Gunn theme soon if Warner Bros. has its way. According to Variety, the studio is developing a movie based on the classic arcade game Spy Hunter. Producers Dan Lin and Roy Lee are steering the project for Warners, with Chad St. John writing the script. Spy Hunter debuted in arcades in [...]
03.24.10 -
The Trials and Tribulations of Internet Explorer
Every few months, we see a new set of statistics or a new report showing how Internet Explorer is losing browser share, becoming increasingly irrelevant or dying on the vine. This of course sets off ripples across the tech blogs, which gather into a wave of “Death of IE” posts that we all tweet, Digg [...]
03.24.10 -
Review: New Pokémon Games Blend Classic Monsters, Modern Gameplay
When Nintendo’s Pokémon videogames were taking the world by storm a decade ago, Pokémaniacs couldn’t wait for the sequels Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver. The two games, identical aside from slight differences in the pocket monsters in them, blew away fans when they were released in 2000: The sequels boasted a much larger quest, better [...]
03.24.10 -
With AT&T; Femtocell, Your Coverage Troubles Could Be Over
The incessant complaints about AT&T’s poor voice and data services could soon come to an end, though at a cost of $150. AT&T on Wednesday announced the nationwide release of its 3G MicroCell, the company’s first femtocell. It’s a device that creates a tiny 3G data and voice signal for your personal use, eliminating AT&T’s network [...]
03.24.10 -
GoDaddy Stops Selling Chinese Domains Over Censorship Concerns
GoDaddy, the net’s largest domain-name registrar, announced Wednesday it would stop selling .cn domain names, saying it was unwilling to comply with new rules from the Chinese government that require new and existing .cn domain-name holders to provide photo ID. The announcement comes just two days after Google redirected its censored Google.cn search engine to its [...]
03.24.10 -
Law Enforcement Appliance Subverts SSL
That little lock on your browser window indicating you are communicating securely with your bank or e-mail account may not always mean what you think its means. Normally when a user visits a secure website, such as Bank of America, Gmail, PayPal or eBay, the browser examines the website’s certificate to verify its authenticity. At a recent [...]
03.24.10 -
Futuristic Pod Car Combines GM Vision, Segway Practicality
General Motors sees a future where people navigate crowded cities in big Segways that look kinda like a Dyson vacuum cleaner and can drive you home when you’ve had one too many. Seriously. The General unveiled a trio of electric “urban mobility vehicles,” built with help from the über-geeks at Segway, today in Shanghai. They’re called [...]
03.24.10 -
XSS Vulnerabilities, Raw SQL Top List of Common Programming Errors
No programmer is perfect, but some mistakes are more dangerous than others. While some mistakes might just slow down your site, others can open up vulnerabilities that expose your code, your database and even your users to all manner of attack. To help you identify the more serious errors common in programs of all types, a [...]
03.24.10 -
Nyoombl Uses the TV for Video Conferencing
A tiny device promises to make video conferencing a better experience by using the TV that’s already in your living room. Nyoombl, an interestingly named startup, makes a gadget called Greypfroot that will sit on top of your TV and allow you to make calls from one TV to another or to a phone mobile or [...]
03.24.10 -
Chemical From Plastic Water Bottles Found Throughout Oceans
A survey of 200 sites in 20 countries around the world has found that bisphenol A, a synthetic compound that mimics estrogen and is linked to developmental disorders, is ubiquitous in Earth’s oceans. Bisphenol A, or BPA, is found mostly in shatter-proof plastics and epoxy resins. Most people have trace amounts in their bodies, likely absorbed [...]
03.24.10
-
What If Everyone on Twitter Read One Book?
I have a dream. An idea. A maybe great notion. Actually, as Auggie March might say, “I got a scheme.” What if everyone on Twitter read the same book at the same time and we formed one massive, international book club? Usually such programs are organized by big-city libraries. Seattle started the trend for collective reading [...]
03.24.10 -
It’s True: Hot Water Really Can Freeze Faster Than Cold Water
Hot water really can freeze faster than cold water, a new study finds. Sometimes. Under extremely specific conditions. With carefully chosen samples of water. New experiments provide support for a special case of the counterintuitive Mpemba effect, which holds that water at a higher temperature turns to ice faster than cooler water. The Mpemba effect is named [...]
03.24.10 -
Break Up the NSA!
When Google called in the National Security Agency to help secure its networks, it made a lot of us queasy. Sure, the NSA has some of the world’s most sophisticated cyber defenders. But the agency’s intelligence arm has a long and ugly history of mass surveillance on American citizens. So when Google teams up with [...]
03.24.10 -
MiFi Update Adds Movie and Music Streaming
Today Novatel, the people behind the miraculous little MiFi personal hotspot, announced Novadrive, a cloud storage service for MiFi owners. Boring. What it didn’t announce is way better: an update to the MiFi which adds media streaming to the iPod Touch or any other connected device. The update, demoed at the CTIA show and which will [...]
03.24.10 -
Zibits Mini R/C Robots Giveaway
I’m a sucker for small robots, and have a thriving community of the creatures migrating back and forth between my office and home. I suspect they hitch rides in my camera bag, but haven’t been able to catch any of them in the act. Last month a Wall-E and M-O showed up on the dining [...]
03.24.10 -
Neat Hack: Binder-Clip Cable-Keepers
This one is more for the life-hacking crowd than the gadget-loving crowd, but the simplicity, ingenuity and plain good-looks of this little cable management hack make it worth showing off. It also plays right into my cable-tidying obsession, meaning I couldn’t not post it. This binder-clip cable-saver comes from David Rudolf Bakker in the Netherlands, and [...]
03.24.10 -
National Geographic Goes Wild
We are always looking for good things on television for our kids. I don’t have a problem with television. It’s just a box that displays pictures and makes sound. Content is the key to the good things about television and the bad things about television. The best television is something that you like, something the kids [...]
03.24.10 -
8-Bit Hanger Brings Mouse Pointer Into Your Home
My mother told me that it’s rude to point. Then again, we’re English, so pretty much everything is considered to be rude or inconsiderate to somebody. As a nation, we are uptight except when drunk. The 8-Bit Hanger, then, should never be sold in Blighty, as these pixelated pointy fingers would be the equivalent of [...]
03.24.10 -
Mercs vs. Pirates: Deadly Shootout on the High Seas
For months, shipping firms have been testing ways to repel pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia, trying everything from sonic blasters to warning shots. But things have now escalated to lethal force: A Somali pirate was apparently killed yesterday in a gunfight between a cargo ship and a pirate skiff. According to a news release [...]
03.24.10 -
Dork Tower Wednesday
Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad. Find the Dork Tower archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.
03.24.10
-
Exclusive: New Time Lord’s Take on Doctor Who
No one knows quite what to expect as Matt Smith steps into David Tennant’s shoes as Doctor Who’s new Time Lord. In the quick clip we’ve seen so far, Smith seems quirkier for sure — and he looks to be an enthusiastic traveler. So what is Smith’s take on the Doctor’s psyche? “I think the Doctor’s got [...]
03.24.10 -
Google ‘Erratic’ in Beijing: Report
Google’s abandoned China address, google.cn, is still directing traffic to its Hong Kong servers, but Reuters reports that service is erratic across Beijing. With reporting credited to the Beijing newsroom Reuters says some searches “for even non-sensitive terms like ‘hello’ returning error messages” and that businesses, college students and private homes were reporting intermittent problems [...]
03.24.10 -
Comics Spotlight on: Bleach
Happy Comic Release Day! When my two sons take twenty volumes of a manga out of the local library and devour them all in one weekend, I pay attention. That’s exactly what happened with Bleach by Tito Kube from Viz Media. Summary: Ichigo Kurosaki has always been able to see ghosts. When his family is attacked by a Hollow–a [...]
03.24.10 -
Guitarbud Hooks Axe to iPhone
The Guitarbud from PRS is little more than a cable that takes the output from the jack of an electric guitar and splits it to headphones and an iPhone. But this simple accessory, if done right, could offer almost endless possibilities for guitarists. It all depends on which app you pump the sound into. The built-in [...]
03.24.10 -
Top 10 Geeky Changes Included in the Health Care Reform Bill
Here at GeekDad we tend to stay out of politics in general and we certainly don’t choose sides. However, with the recent passing of the Health Care Reform bill through Congress we can’t pretend we aren’t aware of what is going on in the world. Not getting too deep into the politics or the function [...]
03.24.10 -
Preview: Instapaper Pro for iPad
Instapaper Pro, our favorite read-later iPhone application here at Gadget Lab, will be available for the iPad on day one. Over at the Instapaper blog, developer Marco Arment has posted screenshots and a great explanation of the problems facing developers without access to an actual, physical iPad. Instapaper Pro for iPad will be a universal app, [...]
03.24.10 -
Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Women in Technology
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate women and girls in technology. It is in honor of Ada Lovelace, obviously, who is often credited with writing the first computer program. Ada Lovelace was often ill as a child, but she kept up her education during her illnesses. She learned mathematics and science from private [...]
03.24.10 -
Awesomeness From A to Z
Last June and July, the artist Neill Cameron crowdsourced ideas for an alphabet of awesomeness. Between readers on his blog, his followers on Twitter, and commenters on his Facebook page, twenty-six sufficiently awesome ideas were generated, and Cameron produced some brilliant art based on each. The project, called “A to Z of Awesomeness,” can be seen [...]
03.24.10 -
EcoCHARGE Wall-Wart: Slim On Power, Slim On Looks
I’ll admit it: I’m obsessed with power cables and wall-warts of all kinds. Maybe its because nobody made a good one yet, so nowhere can I buy a power-brick that will fit neatly into a strip without crowding out others, that will charge USB devices and switch off when it isn’t needed. I shall keep [...]
03.24.10 -
James Cameron Pegs Avatar DVD Release to Earth Day
HOLLYWOOD — James Cameron is taking Avatar’s eco-friendly message seriously, announcing Tuesday that the sci-fi blockbuster’s DVD release will be pegged to the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. “I’m not trying to sell DVDs on the back of the hardship of the planet as much as I’m hoping that continued conversation surrounding Avatar and these issues [...]
03.23.10
-
Climate Hackers Want to Write Their Own Rules
This week, 200 scientists will gather in an attempt to determine how research into the possibilities of geoengineering the planet to combat climate change should proceed. They say it’s necessary because of the riskiness and scale of the experiments that could be undertaken — and the moral implications of their work to intentionally alter the Earth’s [...]
03.23.10 -
6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth
<< previous image | next image >> Scientists and policymakers are meeting this week to discuss whether geoengineering to fight climate change can be safe in the future, but make no mistake about it: We’re already geoengineering Earth on a massive scale. digg_url ="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/geoengineering-gallery/"; From diverting a third of Earth’s available fresh water to planting and grazing two-fifths [...]
03.23.10 -
Exclusive Excerpt: Hack the Planet
The battle lines on geoengineering have begun to take shape. On one side are modern-day romantics, who consider geoengineering an a priori violation of humans’ role as planetary citizens to let nature be natural and take a humble place within it. Better to solve the climate problem by reducing our impact on the planet, they [...]
03.23.10 -
Q&A;: Geoengineering Is ‘A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come’
While humans have unintentionally been altering Earth’s climate for centuries, some scientists have begun to study how to intentionally hack the globe to cool the overheated planet. Read a Wired.com exclusive excerpt from the new book by Eli Kintisch, Hack the Planet. Eli Kintisch’s new book, Hack the Planet provides a thorough and nuanced portrait of the [...]
03.23.10 -
Shoplifting Couple Jailed for eBay Toy Sales
A California couple that bragged on national television about shoplifting toys — which included Lego and Star Wars-themed toys — have been sentenced to more than a year in prison each after being busted selling the hot goods on eBay. Matthew and Laura Eaton were indicted in September, more than a year after they appeared on [...]
03.23.10 -
Meet Merton, Chatroulette’s Drive-By Piano Guy
Chatroulette’s instant intimacy makes the daisy-chain webcam service the perfect “venue” for Merton, the improv piano player whose witty real-time songwriting has become a hit on YouTube. “I’m not really comfortable performing onstage in front of a lot of people, and it’s also much harder to have an intimate experience with a lot of people” when [...]
03.23.10 -
Best Unsubscribe Ever
Groupon is a web service that sends a daily deal via e-mail to hundreds of thousands of deal seekers, but for customers who decide they’d rather pay full price, or just want a clean inbox, the company has a page just for them. Click on the image below to be taken to the real deal [...]
03.23.10 -
Sprint, HTC Unveil First 4G Android Phone
Android superfactory HTC’s latest smartphone is a 4G device designed just for Sprint. The phone, called HTV Evo, is a feature-packed gadget that will have the distinction of being the first phone offered for a 4G network in the United States. The Evo has a 4.3-inch touchscreen (by comparison, the iPhone’s display is 3.5 inches, while [...]
03.23.10 -
Video: SpaceShipTwo First Captive Flight
Virgin Galactic has released video from yesterday’s first captive flight of SpaceShipTwo, also known as the VSS Enterprise. Yesterday’s flight lasted 2 hours and 54 minutes and flew to 45,000 feet. It was the 25th flight for WhiteKnightTwo since the aircraft first flew back in December of 2008. The video from Virgin Galactic shows crews preparing [...]
03.23.10 -
Danger Room Mythbuster: Nazi Rocket Barge, Sunk
In a speech yesterday on missile defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn talked about a “new and more complex era of hybrid threats” in which potential U.S. adversaries might combine high-tech and low-tech tools to mount a surprise attack. And to make his point, he drew on a history lesson: German plans during World [...]
03.23.10
-
PayPal, Apps Prove a Potent Combination
PayPal has spent nearly a decade mainly as the payment-fulfillment arm of its parent company, eBay. But with the explosion of the mobile internet and the endless opportunities to leverage smartphones as personal piggy banks, the company is positioning itself — again — as the virtual wallet you can’t leave home without. Last week it upgraded [...]
03.23.10 -
Innovative SpyParty Is Ultimate Mind Game
SAN FRANCISCO — At last year’s Game Developers Conference, designer Chris Hecker unveiled a prototype of a new game called SpyParty. This year, he let me play it. SpyParty is like nothing else I’ve ever played. It’s an asymmetrical multiplayer game: One player mingles among computer-controlled party guests, attempting to perform sly feats of espionage. The other [...]
03.23.10 -
Archie Bronson Outfit Spins 21st-Century Sci-Fi Grooves on Coconut
Coconut, the title of Archie Bronson Outfit’s latest dizzying blend of grooves, sounds organic enough. But from its vintage synths and sine oscillators to its spacey, sci-fi sound, the record is an inorganic pleasure. In an era up to its space helmet in retrospective gold rushes, it’s practically impossible to listen to Coconut and think it [...]
03.23.10 -
Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card
Lawmakers are proposing a national identification card — what they’re calling “high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security cards” — that would be required for all employees in the United States. The proposal by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) comes as the states are grappling to produce another national identification card at the [...]
03.23.10 -
Video: Opera Mini on the iPhone
As we mentioned last week, we got to see a preview of Opera’s Mini 5 browser running on the iPhone. Opera was showing off the app at its booth at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. But the Opera folks wouldn’t let us photograph it or shoot video of it, and they [...]
03.23.10 -
A Global Anti-Censorship Policy for Google
Google has cleverly decided to get around Chinese Internet censors by routing all traffic through its Hong Kong-based site. The company isn’t going to play anymore with a government that won’t let people find information about democracy, dictatorship or Tiananmen Square. But as a few people have pointed out, Google isn’t completely consistent in its outrage. [...]
03.23.10 -
African Footprint Fossils Are Oldest Evidence of Upright Walk
Despite a penchant for hanging out in trees, human ancestors living 3.6 million years ago in what’s now Tanzania extended their legs to stride much like people today do, a new study finds. If so, walking may have evolved in leaps and bounds, rather than gradually, among ancient hominids. The discovery comes from the famed trackway [...]
03.23.10 -
Review: Stand, Shoot and Slash in Red Steel 2 Wii
I played Red Steel 2 on my feet, for hours at a stretch. I don’t know if that’s how you’re “supposed” to play this new Wii game, available Tuesday, a first-person shooter in which you don’t do a whole lot of shooting. What makes this game unique is that your character’s most powerful weapon is his [...]
03.23.10 -
Gonzalez Accomplice Gets Probation for Selling Browser Exploit
A computer security professional who sold Internet Explorer exploit code to credit card hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced Tuesday in Boston to three years probation and a $10,000 fine. Jeremy Jethro, 29, was paid $60,000 by Gonzalez for a zero-day exploit against Microsoft’s browser, “the purpose and function of which was to … enable the conspirators to unlawfully [...]
03.23.10 -
Better Place Charges Ahead Down Under
Better Place is going Down Under with a plan to roll out an EV charging network in Australia beginning in 2012. The Silicon Valley company’s announcement makes Australia the third country — behind Israel and Denmark — to join entrepreneur Shai Agassi in creating the infrastructure we’ll need if electric vehicles are to catch on. Better [...]
03.23.10
-
Cracks in Great Chinese Firewall, Even Without Google
BEIJING (Reuters) - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are out, but in China’s vast and bewildering online universe you can freely read the New York Times or visit a favorite porn site. People outside China who have read about Internet censorship — thrown into the spotlight by Google’s decision on Monday to close its [...]
03.23.10 -
Q+A: What’s Next For Google’s China Workers?
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Google’s decision to shutter its Chinese search website and redirect users to its Hong Kong-based search page leaves the fate of its 600 China-based employees in the balance. Angst among those employees, who work across a range of operations mostly in Beijing and Shanghai, has been high in the last [...]
03.23.10 -
Lord Vader, Your Motorcycle Is Ready
This is the Magpul Ronin, and it’s what you get when a company that makes firearms accessories decides to make a motorcycle. The motorcycle in question is, mostly, a Buell 1125R sportbike. The guys at Magpul are riders who loved the bike but thought the aesthetics — never a strongpoint for Buell — sucked. When Harley-Davidson [...]
03.23.10 -
The Cooper-Xavier Fallacy: “The Big Bang Theory” Sacrifices Accuracy for Humor
Pretty much all of us at GeekDad love “The Big Bang Theory.” It’s possibly the first show that has ever successfully managed to make fun of and celebrate geeks at the same time. Plus, they have an evil version of honorary GeekDad Wil Wheaton as a recurring character, which is all kinds of awesome. One of [...]
03.23.10 -
Rocket-Launched ‘Rapid Eye’ Drone’s Rapid Demise
Drones are an indispensable tool in modern warfare: They can loiter for hours, providing crucial surveillance of distant targets. But what if you need to get a drone somewhere in a hurry? That was the idea behind Rapid Eye. In 2007, Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, announced plans to package a folding drone inside the [...]
03.23.10 -
Warning: Girl Cooties Below
I never did anything “girlie” growing up. My interests were comic books, football, baseball, Tarzan, and lots of science fiction/fantasy novels. I had toy guns, not make-up kits. I had the Johnny West action figures, not the Barbie dream house. I did love the Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and the Black Stallion books. Those, of course, are [...]
03.23.10 -
The Force Is Strong with Amigurumi
It is a rule universally acknowledged that all popular art forms eventually converge on the Star Wars universe. Amigurumi–Japanese-style crocheted figures–are no different. LucyRavenscar has designed a whole series of Star Wars themed amigurumi, inspired in part by the Star Wars LEGO aesthetic. Better yet, she’s offering the patterns for sale on [...]
03.23.10 -
When You Fly as a Test Pilot, You Never Fly Alone
In commercial and military aviation, long gone are the days of a test pilot risking his life to go fly an airplane that has never flown before, with little idea of what is going to happen once the wheels leave the ground. Much of the lore surrounding test pilots still comes from an era during [...]
03.23.10 -
Nintendo 3DS Will Boast Glasses-Free 3-D, Coming Soon
Nintendo’s next portable game machine will be called “Nintendo 3DS” and feature 3-D graphics, the company said Tuesday morning. The Nintendo 3DS is a next-generation portable game machine, a successor to the current line of products. It will feature a 3-D display that does not require the use of glasses. It will be released in Japan [...]
03.23.10 -
Vials of Artist’s Blood, Skin Show Up in Freaky Art Show Flesh and Blood
Even the most jaded art connoisseurs have to marvel at John U. Abrahamson’s weird sense of mission: The artist spent a year extracting skin samples and blood from his own body, then stored the material in 650 vials for an installation that includes 20 oil paintings of distorted body parts. In Flesh and Blood, the [...]
03.22.10
-
New Doctor Who Emerges From the Tardis
After a glorious run with David Tennant as the Doctor and Russell T. Davies as the show’s writer, a new Doctor Who is emerging from the Tardis. Matt Smith is the 11th incarnation of the Time Lord in the show, the longest-running sci-fi television series in history. In the one-minute video clip above, we get a [...]
03.22.10 -
RoboCop’s Cruiser Gets a BMW Engine
Carbon Motors is gunning for a unique niche in the auto biz — cop cars. That kind of narrowcasting is unconventional among automakers, and in keeping with that theme Carbon Motors has selected a most unusual engine for the cruiser it says we’ll see in 2012. A BMW. More specifically, a BMW diesel. Carbon Motors’ cruiser, codenamed [...]
03.22.10 -
Dinosaurs Rode Volcanic Armageddon to Victory
Geologists have turned a series of 200 million-year-old lake-bed sediments into an epic narrative of the dinosaurs’ journey from ecological obscurity to Earthly supremacy, a mystery that has lingered even as their disappearance is explained. The dino path to dominance appears to have been cleared when the supercontinent Pangea cracked, setting off 600,000 years of volcanic [...]
03.22.10 -
Conway’s Game of Life in JavaScript
The Game of Life, the most famous example of cellular automata and the basis of countless generative music, art and computer programming projects, has its own JavaScript simulator. The concept, created in 1970 by the mathematician John Conway, relies on very simple rules applied to cells on a board. The cells are either “on/alive” or “off/dead,” [...]
03.22.10 -
Australian Game Censor Resigns
Michael Atkinson, South Australian attorney general, resigned from his position on Sunday. Atkinson has long been considered the roadblock to Mature-rated videogames being sold in the country. Australia is the only Western democracy without a rating similar to our Mature classification. Atkinson came under fire from gamers for refusing to help create an R18+ rating for [...]
03.22.10 -
Photos: SpaceShipTwo Completes First Captive Flight
Virgin Galactic has released some details about today’s first captive flight of SpaceShipTwo. The early morning flight lasted for nearly three hours and achieved an altitude of 45,000 feet. Attached to WhiteKnightTwo, the second generation spacecraft from Scaled Composites lifted off at 7:05am from the Mojave Air and Space Port. Scaled Composites founder and legendary aerospace [...]
03.22.10 -
Gamer Comedy The Guild Makes Streamy Top 10
Gamers voted with their mouses to vault The Guild and several other videogame-oriented web series to the top of the 10 most popular of the year as curated by the Streamy Awards. Crowdsourcing the finalists for its Audience Choice Award, the Streamy organization announced Monday that actress-writer Felicia Day and her crew will compete for the [...]
03.22.10 -
Challenging Freeware Classic Cave Story Makes Wii Debut
It’s been a long time coming, but the indie platformer Cave Story finally debuted Monday on WiiWare, priced at $12. The downloadable Cave Story began its life as PC freeware back in 2004. The retro-styled indie game hewed close to the Metroidvania model of side-scrolling action and exploration. The brainchild of a single creator, Daisuke “Pixel” [...]
03.22.10 -
Russia Arrests Alleged Mastermind of RBS WorldPay Hack
Russian authorities have nabbed the man accused of masterminding a coordinated global ATM heist of $9.5 million from Atlanta-based card processing company RBS WorldPay. Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, according to the Sunday Mail, which broke the story last week in the United Kingdom. The Financial [...]
03.22.10 -
Google Raises Your Coding Skills to a Higher Degree
There are several places on the web you can turn if you want to learn how to program. Of course, this very site is the best place to start. Webmonkey has a massive library spanning over 13 years of web tutorials. There’s also Sitepoint and Smashing Magazine and O’Reilly Answers. Today, we’d like to give some massive [...]
03.22.10
-
Michael Jackson’s Revived Captain EO Is Still Wired, Slightly Tired
ANAHEIM, California — Michael Jackson’s 3-D short film Captain EO is playing again at Disneyland, and the 24-year-old space opera still holds up. Mostly. Representing the height of 1986 movie technology, Captain EO was a lavish collaboration between Disney and George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic studio. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Jackson at [...]
03.22.10 -
Fantastico! Chrysler to Build Fiat 500 EV
Hey! There are signs of life at Chrysler, which says an electric version of the Fiat 500 will roll silently into American showrooms in 2012. Chrysler was long on promises and short on details today when it announced its engineers are developing an electric drivetrain for the car, which we loved as a concept (pictured) at [...]
03.22.10 -
SpaceShipTwo Makes First (Captive) Flight
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made its first captive carry flight early this morning at the Mojave Air and Space Port. SpaceShipTwo, which was christened the VSS Enterprise at its unveiling in December, is being carried by WhiteKnightTwo on its first test flight. According to Aviation Week, SpaceShipTwo has been undergoing ground testing with WhiteKnightTwo recently, but this [...]
03.22.10 -
Secret Service Paid TJX Hacker $75,000 a Year
Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez earned $75,000 a year working undercover for the U.S. Secret Service, informing on bank card thieves before he was arrested in 2008 for running his own multimillion-dollar card-hacking operation. The information comes from one of Gonzalez’s best friends and convicted accomplices, Stephen Watt. Watt pleaded guilty last year to creating a [...]
03.22.10 -
Why Dark Coffee Is Easier on Your Stomach
SAN FRANCISCO — Roasting coffee beans doesn’t just impart bold, rich flavor. It also creates a compound that helps dial down production of stomach acid, according to research presented on March 21 at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. The discovery may explain why dark-roasted brews are gentler on the stomach than [...]
03.22.10 -
Holding Afghanistan’s Corrupt Cops To Account
In Afghanistan, the weakest link when it comes to providing security is the country’s cash-strapped and often corrupt police force. But billions of dollars spent by the State Department and the Pentagon haven’t helped matters either: As a recent Newsweek/ProPublica investigation pointed out, outsourcing the training of Afghan police forces has been nothing short of [...]
03.22.10 -
Inventors Design Less-Lethal ‘Taser Me Elmo’ Rifle
Lund Technologies dreams up prototypes for just about everything, from hydrogen-powered toy rockets and light-up footballs to the top-selling Honey My Baby Pony and T.M.X. Tickle Me Elmo dolls. But with a little financing from the Pentagon, the company has also devised a new type of less-lethal rifle. According to the company, the Lund Variable Velocity [...]
03.22.10 -
SXSW Is a Band’s Social Network Like No Other
AUSTIN, Texas — Don’t expect the bands and labels gathered at the South by Southwest Music Festival to forsake MySpace, Twitter and Facebook anytime soon. Most musicians and industry players find that none of these virtual connections replace the need to shake hands, look one another in the eye or bond over a couple of Lone [...]
03.22.10 -
SXSW: Comic Artist James Kochalka Heads to Mars and Beyond
AUSTIN, Texas — James Kochalka is a bit of a nerd wizard. He’s a renowned comic book artist with a daily strip and several graphic novels to his name, and he’s almost finished designing his first videogame. He’s also a songwriter and musician who fronts his own rock band, called James Kochalka Superstar. Now, the Vermont native [...]
03.22.10 -
SXSW Scenes: Hot Dogs, Hare Krishna and Rock
AUSTIN, Texas — With crowds spilling out of the clubs and into the streets, South by Southwest brings together characters of all sorts. “It’s just a big, mellow event,” said Al Morris III, lead guitarist of “blacker than Black Sabbath” metal band Iron Man, out of Washington, D.C. “It’s like how Woodstock was back in ‘69.” The [...]
03.20.10
-
Video: Universal to Reveal Harry Potter Theme Park’s Opening Day
After months of teasing and vague promises, Universal Orlando is gearing up to reveal the opening date of its Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. In this video released Thursday, we see glimpses of the making of the attraction’s premier ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, which will star the cast of the blockbuster [...]
03.20.10 -
Review: Hubble 3D Takes You on Beautiful, Brief Space Journey
The premise of Imax: Hubble 3D is simple: Make home movies in space. And what beautiful movies they are. The stunning space vistas and intimate moments with astronauts make for a fascinating flash of interstellar eye candy. The images were captured in 2009 when the space shuttle Atlantis crew left Earth to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. [...]
03.20.10 -
Artists Get Their Geek On to Celebrate Yuri’s Night
<< previous image | next image >> On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin embarked on the first manned voyage into outer space. The geek equivalent of St. Patrick’s Day takes place next month in more than 70 locations as science-minded revelers throw parties to celebrate Gagarin’s historic feat. Getting the jump on the international [...]
03.19.10 -
Bad Magic Comic Mysterius Makes Good Tech Satire
The line between magic and technology in the 21st century is blurrier than ever, especially in Mysterius, the Unfathomable, Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler’s hilarious comic released this week as a paperback collection from DC’s Wildstorm imprint. “I would liken tech to stage magic,” Parker told Wired.com. “The tech that catches on has the best barkers, [...]
03.19.10 -
The Tester, Episode 5: Tinned Pies and Canned Laughter
Previously on The Tester, the Death Panel voted out Luge for the sin of not having learned how to LARP during her sheltered Brooklyn childhood. She was cast to the wolves, by which I mean panelists David Jaffe and Katherine De León, who smothered her with honey barbecue sauce and ate her the minute the [...]
03.19.10 -
Dogfighting over the Taiwan Strait
For national-security dorks who like to read the Defense Department’s 36(b) arms sale notifications, watching the back-and-forth over weapons sales to Taiwan is pure entertainment. It’s partly a question of political spin, but it’s also an interesting look at how the Pentagon sizes up the military balance between China and Taiwan. Back in January, the Defense [...]
03.19.10 -
Heavy Rain ‘Taxidermist’ DLC Coming April 1
The “Taxidermist” add-on for Heavy Rain was given away to those who preordered the PlayStation 3 game last month. Sony said Friday that the downloadable content will go up for sale to the unwashed masses on April 1 for $5. This bit of DLC — apparently the first chapter in an upcoming series of bite-sized bits [...]
03.19.10 -
Rich Get Richer in ‘Hot News’ Stock-Tip Fight
A well-known financial news aggregator is being ordered by a federal judge to delay publication of prominent financial analysts’ buy and sell recommendations to allow the well-to-do the first crack at capitalizing on that trading research. The 3-year-old litigation, brought by Barclays Capital, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and others, rests on the so-called “hot news” doctrine [...]
03.19.10 -
SXSW: Scenes From a Musical Madhouse
AUSTIN, Texas — With hundreds of bands playing simultaneously at any given time, South by Southwest can be a musician’s wildest dream or a band’s worst nightmare. A bad monitor mix can lead to an ear-splitting set; an unfortunate show time or venue can mean playing to a tiny crowd. Even simple logistics can be [...]
03.19.10 -
Lucasfilm’s The Clone Wars: Best Political Cartoon Ever?
Political murder, mercenary violence, military occupations and callous terrorists don’t just kill as newspaper headlines. They’ve also made excellent thematic fodder for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, whose dark second season returns with a seven-week stand starting Friday night. The procedural and corporate intrigue has also solidified Lucasfilm’s CGI tween fever dream as one of Earth’s [...]
03.19.10
-
With AT&T; Femtocell, Your Coverage Troubles Could Be Over
03.24.10 -
9 SXSW Bands That Blew Us Away Unexpectedly
03.24.10 -
Hello, and Welcome to Movie Phone: Mobile Apps Duke It Out
03.24.10 -
It’s True: Hot Water Really Can Freeze Faster Than Cold Water
03.24.10 -
ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws
03.24.10 -
Futuristic Pod Car Combines GM Vision, Segway Practicality
03.24.10 -
DNA Reveals New Hominid Ancestor
03.24.10 -
One Kid’s Take on “The Last Airbender’s” Casting Fail
03.23.10 -
Law Enforcement Appliance Subverts SSL
03.24.10 -
Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card
03.23.10 -
Review: New Pokémon Games Blend Classic Monsters, Modern Gameplay
03.24.10 -
Why Dark Coffee Is Easier on Your Stomach
03.22.10 -
Preview: Instapaper Pro for iPad
03.24.10 -
Military Helicopters May Get Gunshot Location System
03.24.10 -
Lord Vader, Your Motorcycle Is Ready
03.23.10 -
6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth
03.23.10 -
Mercedes Builds a Sweet Gullwing For the Track
03.24.10 -
Chemical From Plastic Water Bottles Found Throughout Oceans
03.24.10 -
Exclusive: New Time Lord’s Take on Doctor Who
03.24.10 -
Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Women in Technology
03.24.10
Services
Quick Links: Contact Us | Login/RegisterLogout | Newsletter | RSS Feeds | Tech Jobs | Wired Mobile | FAQ | Sitemap
Corrections | Sitemap | FAQ | Contact Us | Wired Staff | Advertising | Press Center | Subscription Services | Newsletter | RSS Feeds 
Condé Nast Web Sites:
Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (Revised 8/28/2008) and Privacy Policy (Revised 8/28/2008).
Wired.com © 2010 Condé Nast Digital. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast Digital.