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E-Bomb Awareness Day: Grab Your Tinfoil Hat
Imagine a day on which all members of Congress had their BlackBerries simultaneously switched off — and then had to go without lunch. Change we can believe in! Well, that’s idea behind “EMP Recognition Day,” an idea being cooked up by our friends at the Heritage Foundation. That’s right, Heritage is proposing a special day to [...]
03.25.10 -
Go Daddy Says China Refusal Is No P.R. Stunt
Go Daddy, the net’s largest domain registrar, is infamous for its Super Bowl ads featuring busty models testifying at a fake congressional hearings, but when the company’s top lawyer testified at a real hearing Wednesday about the company’s decision to stop selling .cn domain names, it wasn’t a publicity stunt. At least not according to Christine [...]
03.25.10 -
Eye-Tracking Tablets And The Promise of Text 2.0
The best thing about reading a book on a tablet (so far) is how closely it approximates reading a “real” book — which is why the Kindle’s screen is matte like paper rather than luminescent like a laptop. Some (not all) fear for the demise of real reading and writing, but it’s more likely we’re [...]
03.25.10 -
Study: One In Four Consumers Considering A Plug-In Car
Cars with cords are coming. It’s inevitable, because everyone from Audi to Volvo is working on one. The first of them will be in showrooms by the end of the year. That’s great, but is there really a market for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles? Consumer Reports says there is and it could be big [...]
03.25.10 -
Why ‘Flutter’ Is a Four-Letter Word For Pilots
The aviation world has been all aflutter about Boeing completing a critical part of the 787 Dreamliner testing program — the all-important flutter tests. They went off without a hitch and the Dreamliner is cleared to fly throughout its normal performance range, which includes speeds up to Mach 0.85 and altitudes just over 40,000 feet. [...]
03.25.10 -
TJX Hacker Gets 20 Years in Prison
BOSTON — Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole more than 90 million credit and debit card numbers from TJX and other retailers. The sentence for the largest computer-crime case ever prosecuted is the lengthiest ever imposed in the United States [...]
03.25.10 -
First Look: Digg for iPhone Launches in App Store
Social news aggregator Digg.com has released its free iPhone app in the App Store. Packed with a slick, feature-rich interface, the app is a strong start for the popular website, though there’s plenty of room for it to grow. Launching the app, you’ll be able to immediately browse popular stories on Digg. You can also view [...]
03.25.10 -
Laser Guidance Adds Power to Wind Turbines
The wind industry may soon be dependent on a different kind of environmental awareness that has more to do with lasers than ecology. A new laser system that can be mounted on wind turbines allows them to prepare for the wind rushing toward their blades. The lasers act like sonar for the wind, bouncing off microscopically small [...]
03.25.10 -
Urban Roverbot Goes Where the Roomba Can’t
All-terrain robots can cost thousands of dollars but Dino Segovis, a DIY enthusiast, transformed a busted Roomba into a robot called the Urban Roverbot that can crawl on rocks as well as it does on polished floors. “Lots of people build bots that they can drive on flat surfaces,” says Segovis.”I wanted to drive one on [...]
03.25.10 -
WIPO: Dope-Vaporizer Seller Not Bogarting Domain Names
The German producer of a popular device used to vaporize marijuana is claiming a North American dealer is bogarting its domain names. But the World Intellectual Property Organization on Thursday sided against Storz & Bickel, the maker of the Volcano Vaporizer, ruling that MSI Imports’ four dozen Volcano-related domains aren’t treading on Storz & Bickel’s trademarks. Storz [...]
03.25.10
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Chemical Fingerprints Could Finger Weapons Makers
SAN FRANCISCO — Finding out whodunit in chemical warfare cases may be aided by scientists focused on the howdunit. Researchers have developed a technique to ascertain the chemical fingerprint of compounds such as mustard gas, rat poison and nerve agents such as VX. Figuring out the details of how these compounds were created in the first [...]
03.25.10 -
Photos: Inside Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey
A sun-baked replica of Hogwarts castle opens its doors to the public June 18 when The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme-park attraction finally goes live in Florida. Universal Orlando Resort on Thursday announced the long-awaited opening date for its J.K. Rowling-inspired theme park. The Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride will be the centerpiece [...]
03.25.10 -
JooJoo Tablets Start Shipping
After a few false starts and some controversy over refunds, JooJoo–the tablet formerly known as CrunchPad–has finally started shipping. Fusion Garage, the Singapore-based company behind JooJoo, says its tablets are now on their way to U.S. customers who pre-ordered them. JooJoo fans who pre-ordered the device should get it by Monday, March 29. That’s interesting timing [...]
03.25.10 -
As Temperature Rises, Earth Breathes Faster — and Maybe Harder
As planetary temperatures rise, Earth’s soils release steadily larger amounts of carbon dioxide, according to massive data crunching from hundreds of soil respiration studies published since 1989. The critical question is whether soils release more CO2 because faster-growing plants pump more in, or if soils release CO2 that would have stayed in the ground at lower [...]
03.25.10 -
Web Browsers Crushed in ‘Pwn2Own’ Contest
Think your web browser is secure? Think again. Nearly every common browser on the web has been compromised as part of the Pwn2Own contest at the annual CanSecWest security conference. Whether it was Internet Explorer on WIndows 7, Safari on OS X, Firefox on Windows or Mobile Safari on the iPhone, just about every browser on [...]
03.25.10 -
Female Chimpanzees Drive the Culture
Chimpanzee culture is driven by its females, suggests a new analysis of six long-term chimp studies. The number of cultural traits in each colony is linked to the number of females. How many males there are makes no difference. “Our results suggest that females are the carriers of chimpanzee culture,” wrote study co-authors Johan Lind and Patrik [...]
03.25.10 -
Nexus One Vs. iPhone Info-Graphic: Googlephone Wins
If you ever doubted that our friends at iFixit were the kings of the nerdy tear-down, you can stop it right now. With one simple (and rather big) info-graphic, Kyle Wiens and his minions have managed to detail almost every difference between the flagging Nexus One Googlephone and Apple’s iPhone 3GS. And despite a huge [...]
03.25.10 -
Air Force Enforces BlackBerry Crackdown
In the military, a true PowerPoint Ranger goes nowhere without a firmly holstered BlackBerry. But new Air Force regulations are about to make life much more complicated for users of the popular handheld device. Last week, the Air Force introduced sweeping changes to boost BlackBerry security. Among other things, the service will disable most Bluetooth functionality: [...]
03.25.10 -
Make It: iPhone Guitar Connection Kit
Soon after yesterday’s post on the PRS Guitarbud, an apparently noisy, badly made cable for connecting your guitar to your iPhone, I got a mail from Gadget Lab reader Paul Stidworthy. Paul makes RiotFX, a $5 “multi-effects processor app” for the iPhone, and is concerned that people using his application get the best sound possible. [...]
03.25.10 -
Public Bikes: Fixed-Gear Style with Granny-Bike Ride
Public Bikes is just about to launch a range of stylish granny-bikes. The cool-looking machines combine the sleek, pared-down look of a fixed-gear bike with the comfort and practicality of the Dutch City Bike. There are two kinds of frame: a step-through (sometimes wrongly called a girls’ frame) and a classic double-triangle, both made from steel. [...]
03.25.10
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PAX East is Almost Here! Do You Know Where Your GeekDads Are?
Session Friday 7:00 Wyvern Theatre (somewhere in the Hynes Convention Center) “How young is too young for The Hobbit? What should my kids’ first LEGO set be? How can I control my disgust if my child tells me he likes Jar Jar and the Ewoks? When should I buy my kids their first [...]
03.25.10 -
Get a Clue on the Mystery Express
I always loved Clue. Okay, the die-rolling was largely unnecessary but I loved the deduction and record-keeping, the strategy behind deciding which cards to show which people to keep them in the dark. Well, now Days of Wonder is releasing a new deduction-style board game, Mystery Express. It’s like Clue, except on a train, and [...]
03.25.10 -
Taurus Concept Is Like Hot Segway Bike From the Future
There’s a guy in my neighborhood who rides two-wheeled, Segway-style wheelchair. It puts him at almost normal standing height, and takes up a lot less floorspace than a regular electric wheelchair. But while he looks pretty cool cruising the barrio, his chair doesn’t come close to this hot concept vehicle, the Taurus. The Taurus, designed by [...]
03.25.10 -
Installing the Lego Autopilot (GeekDad Wayback Machine)
After my proof of concept of a Lego autopilot a couple weeks ago, the hard work began. First thing was to find an appropriate “avionics platform”, AKA a good-sized R/C airplane. We settled on the Electristar .40-sized trainer, which seemed to have the right balance of stability and equipment compartment size. The HiTechnic guys had seen [...]
03.25.10 -
$150 Kobo eReader: The Real Kindle Killer?
The iPad is no Kindle-killer (although buying the almost $500 DX now seems a little silly). The Kindle, and any other e-reader, will continue to be great for just reading books, with the sunlight-friendly e-ink display and the long, long battery life making for a great single-purpose device. The real Kindle-killer will be a cheap [...]
03.25.10 -
The Tiny-But-Wondrous World of Mouse Guard
What is it about talking animals that fascinates us? And by us, I mean me. I’ve always loved books involving critters, whether they behave more like real animals who just happen to talk (as in Watership Down) or like small furry people (think Secret of NIMH). And, of course, there are plenty of books in [...]
03.25.10 -
Wall Street Journal iPad Edition: $18 Per-Month
The Wall Street Journal has all but announced the price of its iPad edition: $18 per month. That compares to the official print-edition price of $29-per-month, or $10 if you buy a print subscription through a reseller. The WSJ article quotes people at the WSJ who are “familiar with the situation”, so you can take [...]
03.25.10 -
GeekDad HipTrax #46
[Sorry for the delay everyone! Had a little technical difficulty with the upload Wednesday morning. All better now!] This episode of GeekDad HipTrax is sci-fi themed. Herein we cover all the bases: Firefly, Star Trek and Doctor Who. Okay, so maybe we left out Star Wars. Well Star Wars and BSG… and also Stargate. Let me try this [...]
03.25.10 -
Google Turns Up the China Burner, Microsoft Feels the Heat
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
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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 -
Fallout From Wired.com’s iPhone App Payola Story
The iPhone community has reacted strongly to the Wired.com report that some app-review sites have pay-to-play policies. Last week Gadget Lab 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. Those demands were at odds with [...]
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
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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 -
Go Daddy Stops Selling Chinese Domains Over Censorship Concerns
Go Daddy, 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 [...]
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 -
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 -
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
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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
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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 -
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 -
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
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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
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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 -
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
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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 -
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
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It’s True: Hot Water Really Can Freeze Faster Than Cold Water
03.24.10 -
9 SXSW Bands That Blew Us Away Unexpectedly
03.24.10 -
With AT&T; Femtocell, Your Coverage Troubles Could Be Over
03.24.10 -
Hello, and Welcome to Movie Phone: Mobile Apps Duke It Out
03.24.10 -
Futuristic Pod Car Combines GM Vision, Segway Practicality
03.24.10 -
$150 Kobo eReader: The Real Kindle Killer?
03.25.10 -
Law Enforcement Appliance Subverts SSL
03.24.10 -
Fallout From Wired.com’s iPhone App Payola Story
03.24.10 -
Taurus Concept Is Like Hot Segway Bike From the Future
03.25.10 -
DNA Reveals New Hominid Ancestor
03.24.10 -
Google Turns Up the China Burner, Microsoft Feels the Heat
03.24.10 -
ACTA Draft: No Internet for Copyright Scofflaws
03.24.10 -
Military Helicopters May Get Gunshot Location System
03.24.10 -
Review: New Pokémon Games Blend Classic Monsters, Modern Gameplay
03.24.10 -
Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card
03.23.10 -
Lord Vader, Your Motorcycle Is Ready
03.23.10 -
6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth
03.23.10 -
Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Women in Technology
03.24.10 -
One Kid’s Take on “The Last Airbender’s” Casting Fail
03.23.10 -
What If Everyone on Twitter Read One Book?
03.24.10
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