The Sloth’s Evolutionary Secret

On the surface of things, a two-toed sloth doesn???t look much like its closest fossil kin. The tubby, pug-nosed mammal is not quite as imposing or majestic as Megalonyx ??? the ???great claw??? Thomas Jefferson discovered and mistakenly identified as an enormous lion over two centuries ago. But the two are relatively close relatives. In [...]

Desperate for Users, RIM Slashes PlayBook Prices — Again

Research in Motion is slashing prices on its BlackBerry PlayBook tablets yet again, dropping the bill to 60 percent of the PlayBook???s original asking price. From the first of the year through February 4, PlayBooks ordered directly from RIM???s online store front will cost $300 for any version, regardless of storage capacity.

No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring, Judge Rules

A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect's car to track his public movements for two months.

White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars

Forget Kenya. Never mind the secret madrassas. The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama's past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. That's the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-travelers who swear they traversed time and space at the government's behest.

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer Gets Lion King-ized

No matter how many times we reboot and remix the hero's journey it's still entertaining to watch. Case in point: this mash-up of the new Dark Knight Rises trailer with footage from The Lion King.

Year-End Android, iOS App Downloads Surge

App downloads spiked during the last week of 2011, peaking at 1.2 billion combined iOS and Android app downloads, according to mobile research firm Flurry Analytics. Moreover, Flurry says, it was the biggest week for app downloads in Android and iOS history.

Stats, Rankings Turn Beer Pong Into Moneypong

The Billy Beanes of Bud Light can now know exactly how they stack up against other teams and players in the highly competitive, um, sport of beer pong.

Felix Salmon: Uber and the Cognitive Zone of Discomfort

Uber is a great idea in theory, and the mechanics of it tend to work well in practice. But it's sort of a car service for computers, who always do their sums every time they have to make a calculation. Humans don???t work that way. And the way that Uber is currently priced, it???s always going to find itself in a cognitive zone of discomfort as far as its passengers are concerned.

Risky Rescue for Crippled Air Force Satellite

It was an epic space rescue that, in audacity and risk, echoed NASA's mission to save the astronauts aboard the doomed Apollo 13 moon mission. Except this time, a $2 billion communication satellite was in danger.

The GeekDads Podcast Live Tonight 7:00pm/10:00 PST/EST

For those of you who enjoy our GeekDads podcast, we’ll broadcast the recording session live tonight. So if you’d like to waste an hour and participate via chat room, stop by right here at 7:00 this evening, Pacific Time. We hope to see you here!

Nintendo of America Moves 4M 3DS Units in 2011

Nintendo sold more than four million units of its portable 3DS system last year in the United States, the publisher said Tuesday. Though the glasses-free portable system started off slowly, the 3DS picked up momentum after Nintendo slashed its price from $250 to $170 last summer. Killer app software like Super Mario 3D Land and [...]

Old Services Meet New Media: A Tweeting Cabbie’s Growing Business

“Can you pick me up at my place in 15 minutes? Text me when you get here.” No, this isn’t a text message to a friend or a call to a car service ??? it’s a direct message sent through Twitter to a driver of a Chicago cab. Rashid Temuri,??who goes by “Chicago Cabbie” online??(@ChicagoCabbie??on [...]

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 3

Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

Beautiful, Strange and Geeky: Top Science Image Galleries of 2011

To help you get the new year started with a great procrastination opportunity, we've collected our most popular science image galleries of 2011. From camera traps and photo alteration to weird animals and strange sand, these collections were our readers' favorites.

Volcanic Year in Review for 2011

Star Wars MMXII: A New Hope

For New Year’s this year we rented a house in the Catskills with our good friends and their son. He and my daughter have been best friends since birth, and they’re now six years old. Our plans for the weekend were simple: eat delicious food, drink delicious drinks, and introduce our children to Star Wars. [...]

Archvillain #2: The Mad Mask ?????Who’s the Evil Genius Now?

When we last left Kyle Camden, the smartest kid in Bouring, he was still secretly plotting the downfall of Mighty Mike. Kyle is the only one who knows Mike’s secret: that Mike is really not a human kid, but arrived with the mysterious alien plasma storm. Who knows what sort of secret agenda he has? [...]

Just How Super Is Super Dungeon Explore?

Overview: The kingdom of Crystalia stretches across a remote island, from the heights of Dragonback Peaks to the shores of Clockwork Cove. From the farthest reaches of Crystalia … Ah, never mind. There’s a big dungeon full of monsters to kill and loot to collect. Super Dungeon Explore is a miniatures game from Soda Pop [...]

Herodex: Superheroes and Storytelling

The villainous Flashback lay quivering on the floor, still covered in the debilitating cheese from his last battle. Wormhole unsheathed the nib of his Cosmic Pen and drew a portal. In a shimmer, the fortress vault appeared on the other side. A glass display protected an ancient book, containing the key to power. The Monkeyshines [...]

12 Realistically Mundane New Year’s Resolutions ??? 2012 Edition

There’s a thing about New Year’s resolutions: we don’t keep them. We make lists of empty promises to ourselves but usually the complexity of them doesn’t help them come to fruition. Back in 2010 I wrote a list of resolutions that I didn’t keep. Last year I wrote a list of resolutions … that I [...]

The Mars Ocean Odyssey’s New Voyage

On April 21st, 2007, Reid Stowe and Soanya Ahmad left land and embarked on an incredible voyage. Dubbed the Mars Ocean Odyssey, it was not a trip to the fourth planet from the sun, but an inspiring journey to test the limits of man in harsh conditions, stuck on a ship for the length of [...]

The Anything Cage Traps Almost Anything On Your Bike

Hey, serial killers–don’t get too excited by the name of this next product. It might be called the Anything Cage but, unless you’re still in the animal-torture stages of your budding career, then it won’t be big enough to imprison anything of interest. Touring cyclists, on the other hand, should probably think about grabbing their [...]

Exposed: The Military’s Freakiest ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapon Ideas

Tasers that elicit excruciating spasms in one person at a time? Foam pellets that send an entire crowd fleeing in agony? Pfft. So 2011. Where non-lethal weapons are concerned, the future's all about sonic microwaves that can make swimmers puke mid-stroke, and aircraft with laser beams that can redirect an entire enemy plane mid-flight. Or, at least, those are the deepest, darkest wishes of the Pentagon agency responsible for non-lethal weapons.

Still a Wild World: Top New Animals of 2011

Even though 7 billion people live in Earth's every corner, and several centuries of scientists have catalogued its natural wonders, unknown creatures continue to be found.

Ace of Cakes Goes to School (GeekDad Wayback Machine)

Here in sunny California, 4th grade means learning California history, and a big part of that history are the California Missions. The 21 missions dotting the state, up and down the El Camino Real, were all built between 1769 and 1798, and represent (for good and/or ill) the spread of European (especially Spanish) culture in [...]

Shishavac Automates Your Hookah Habit

According to the Wikipedia entry, smoking a shisha (or hookah) is sooo 16th century. Fire, smoke, water, trees and tobacco–the experience is almost elemental. But the Shishavac wants to brings things up to date, shopping-channel style. A shisha is a water pipe used to smoke flavored tobacco. Similar in principle to a water bong, the shisha [...]

Celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s Twelvetieth Birthday Today!

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy writing, was born January 3, 1892 in what is now South Africa. Best known, of course, for his works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, Tolkien served in the British Army in World War I and was the father of four children, [...]

New on Kickstarter: Skallops Will Let You Build Big

Evan and Michael of Siege Toys blew us away with their first Kickstarter project, a snap-together siege engine laser cut from wood called the Trebuchette. Taking what they’ve learned from their first project, and adding a sublimely simple idea from their old school mate Marshall, they’re back with a follow-up that may outshine their first [...]

Samsung Announces Wi-Fi Enabled, Android Controlled Digicam

Samsung has announced yet another of its DualView double-screen cameras (the ones with an extra screen on the front for framing self portraits). It’s a 16MP compact with a 25-125mm equivalent zoom and maximum apertures running from ??2.5-6.3. ISO stretches up to 3200. But these features are as humdrum and commonplace as a New Year hangover. [...]

Rumor: Apple iBooks Event in New York This Month

Apple is planning a “media event” in New York Later this month, according to All Things D. The event will likely be presented by Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services (and Larry Page look-a-like), Eddy Cue. Will this be the hotly-rumored AppleTV (the actual TV with a screen)? Will it be the iPad [...]

The Un-Internet

The tech world is in an infinite loop. I’ve written about it so many times, but that’s how it goes with loops. You don’t have to write original stuff more than once. Each time around the loop, at some point, everything comes back into style. No need to list all the loops, other [...]

RIP Bob Anderson, Master of the Lightsaber

Everyone knows that Darth Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones and acted by David Prowse; fewer realize that The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi also featured an actual sword fighter for the lightsaber scenes. That man was Bob Anderson, a British fencer, who has died today at 89. From the [...]

Do We Need New Traits to Live Within Limits? Revkin Asks. Lopez Responds, from 1986.

To start the new year,??Andy Revkin, over at Dot Earth at the New York Times,??wondered what traits we humans might be able to develop so that we “fall forward rather than down” as we try to deal with resource limits: The things we don???t know are easily as important as those we do. In such an [...]

Fearmongering Gets Started in 2012: Laacher See is Not “Ready to Blow”

A quick post today about a tremendously terrible “article” in the Daily Mail this morning. The headline reads “?????????Is a super-volcano just 390 miles from London ready to blow?” It is, of course, referring to the Laacher See in western Germany – a caldera volcano that had a large eruption 12,900 years ago that covered [...]

Witnessing the Birth of Sediment

Ron Schott is hosting the latest installment of the geoscience blog carnival, the Accretionary Wedge, and asked participants to write about a geological event or process they observed as it was happening: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to relate the story of the most memorable or significant geological event that you’ve directly [...]

The 501st Legion and Me

Some people dreamed of growing up to be a Stormtrooper and some of us actually made it there. Since February 2011, I have been a proud and active member in the 501st Legion also known as Vader’s Fist. The 501st legion is a worldwide professional costuming club that specializes in the “bad guys” of the [...]

Twitterfight! Group Threatens Lawsuit Over Terror Tweets

Ever since terrorists started using the internet, amateur crusaders, lawmakers and others have tried to fight back, pressuring technology companies to shut out the militants. So it was only a matter of time before the war on terrorist media went social.

The Speed of a Nerf Vortex Disk

Nerf vortex guns shoot spinning disks instead of dart-like objects, but how fast do they go? Dot Physics blogger Rhett Allain uses high-speed video analysis to furnish an answer.

Apple TV Hacked to Run iOS Apps Full-Screen

iOS app developer and hacker extraordinaire Steve Troughton-Smith has managed to get iPhone and iPad apps running full screen on an Apple TV. It’s not pretty, but it works, and iPad apps look pretty decent when blown up onto a larger screen. The hack is running on a jailbroken Apple TV (using the standard Season Pass [...]

2012’s Most Tantalizing Movies

From sci-fi and Batman to zombies and vampires, next year's looking like a bloody great cinematic feast.

100 Quotes Every Geek Should Know

One thing that every geek can do is quote their favorite geek-culture media, whether it’s movies, books, television, theater or music. The GeekDads have tried to compile a list of such quotes for your enjoyment. This list is certainly not definitive. Indeed, it’s only the beginning! Feel free to add your own (clean) ones in [...]

New Year, New Resolutions

A year ago I shared with you my geeky resolution: to start writing in the margins of my books. I really thought I’d be able to do it, no problem. I wanted to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind in my own personal library, something that would let future readers follow my path and [...]

Tycho Deep Space Uprighting Work Continues

The last month a lot of work was done related to the uprighting system of space capsule Tycho Deep Space. This system involving four inflatable bags will be used to help the space capsule position itself in a correct attitude after splash down. For more info on this system please read these previous blog posts: Space [...]

Plug Hub Corrals Cables, Declutters Cubicles

Sitting at your desk? Try wiggling your feet. At the very best, you will have snagged a toe on at least one stray power cable snaking around under there. At the very worst, you are now cursing my name because you just yanked the mains cable from your computer. Sorry. Thankfully, there is a solution. It’s [...]

Happy Birthday, Isaac Asimov!

One day when I was 12 I ventured into the adult section of my local public library for the first time. There, I encountered the Science Fiction Shelf. That year I began reading my way along the shelf, starting with the “A’s” and moving along the alphabet. Naturally, one of the first writers I delved [...]

Retro iPhone Camera Case Most Impressive, Comprehensive Yet

We’ve seen a few stabs over the years at making the iPhone look and feel more like a “real” camera, from Leica-esque stickers to the Red Pop, which added a hardware shutter button by plugging into the dock connector. But in terms of both retro-tastic-ality, and plain utility, the GIZMON iCA case is hard to beat. The [...]

The Best Board Games of 2011

2011 was a tricky year: my family went through a major move, from our tiny rural town in western Kansas to a bustling metropolitan center in the Pacific Northwest. For me, it meant scaling back on game nights as I was preparing for moves and ??? gasp! ??? sealing up my games in moving boxes. [...]

Dropbox Automator Processes, Edits Your Dropbox Files

Dropbox Automator does exactly what it promises to do: It takes files in your Dropbox and does things to them, automatically. Point it at a folder and it’ll check every few seconds for anything new. Then, when you add a file, it acts. Photos can be sent to Facebook, or have special effects added to them. [...]

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 2

Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

Finding Bigfoot Scours New York for Sasquatch

For some people, searching for furry, human-ish animals that have been rumored to roam North America is a science. Those people star in Finding Bigfoot.

What’s Inside Explorer: The Mystery Boxes?

Kazu Kibuishi, the editor of the Flight anthologies and creator of the Amulet series, has a new comics anthology coming in March. Explorer: The Mystery Boxes features seven stories about, you guessed it, mysterious boxes. What’s inside each box? Where is it from? What does it do? I’ve read an advance proof, and it’s a [...]

Movies of 2011 for My Dad Cave

I have a few types of movies that I enjoy watching in the dad cave. Some appeal to my hankering for science fiction series or my deepest obsession with Star Trek. Some are classic guy movies that deal with some of my favorite things: war movies, action stars from the classic era, and secret-Nazi-technology-the-Allies-must-destroy-to-save-the-world. And [...]

2011 In The Rear-View Mirror: What You Liked

Happy New Year, constant readers. It seems to be impossible to get past Dec. 31 without a year-end list of some kind, and in the past 48 hours, many, many science bloggers have responded to that impulse by listing their own favorite posts or the ones they liked best that were written by others. (There’s [...]

Paul Allen’s Plans For Space Takes Air Launching To Next Level

The Microsoft co-founder wants to build the biggest airplane ever and use it to launch rockets into space. It's an old idea. He's just super-sizing it.

Stanford Offers A Peek Into Its Extensive Apple History Archives

What we wouldn’t give to watch a “Blue Busters,” a??company video made by Apple employees ??? yes, including Steve Jobs ??? posing as IBM-fighting??Ghost Busters.??Such a video does exist, and it’s currently housed at Stanford University’s Silicon Valley Archives as part of a collection donated by Apple and its employees. The location of the archive [...]

It???s Now Sir Jonathan Ive

By Andrew Liszewski I hope you’re ready for a day of iKnight jokes, because Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, has officially been made a??Knight Commander??of the British Empire. Born in north London in 1967, the 44 year old designer joined Apple in 1992 and has been responsible for some of the [...]

Boston D.A. Subpoenas Twitter Over Occupy Boston, Anonymous

The Boston D.A. dropped a bizarre, and seemingly wide-ranging, subpoena on Twitter, seeking information on accounts ostensibly linked to threats to officers. But there's little more to learn after a Boston judge draped a gag order over the proceedings Thursday.

Hurd Enters Pantheon of (Alleged) Tech Pickups

Well, the letter that ended Mark Hurd's tenure as CEO of HP has finally been published, and the seedy allegations of Hurd's relationship with former Playboy model and B Movie actress Jodie Fisher are now public. Oracle says the letter was "recanted by Ms. Fisher," who "admitted it was full of inaccuracies." But if the pickup techniques alleged in it are true, Hurd definitely gets a spot as the coiner of a few of the top tech pickup techniques of all time.

Video: Alien Trailer Gets Prometheus Remix

A video-editing whiz has remade the new Prometheus trailer using footage from director Ridley Scott’s Alien. “Alien Teaser Trailer — Prometheus Style,” by Joel Walden (aka YouTube user heresjohnny1991), takes all the tropes of the buzz-worthy trailer for Scott’s upcoming sort-of prequel — ominous music, smash-cuts of big-action moments, compelling fonts — and applies them to [...]

Beyond ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’: The Music of Occupy Wall Street

While the Occupy movement might be best known for its encampments and radical organizing strategies, it's also inspired a new generation of protest songs. Here's a selection.

Five 2011 Tech Tremors That Will Create Aftershocks for Years

2011 had some pretty remarkable advances that seem to be the start of inexorable things to come, as well as some surprising and sad examples of demise, whose impact will surely be felt for years to come, in ways that are currently near-impossible to predict.

Rocket Test BIG-LES & Sapphire-1 Update One

Dear readers, This is a quick video and photo update of the engine tests performed today of Launch Escape System engine BIG-LES and active guided rocket SAPPHIRE-1. Both engine had a great burn and so far it seems like we got the results we wanted. BIG-LES had a 3 seconds perfect burn providing about 8 tonnes of [...]

In Metal Evolution, Rock Gods Hammer Out Genre’s History

The filmmaking duo behind Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and Iron Maiden: Flight 666 crank VH1 Classic up to 11 with a deep dive into the mosh pit of history.

Norwegian Wood Mashes Beatles, Radiohead, Revolution

Beatles geeks, Occupy populists and postmodern fiction nerds should merge sweetly, and sourly, in Norwegian Wood, director Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s 1987 novel. It’s a windswept tone poem to Japan’s turbulent but liberating ’60s, set to a hypnotic score from Radiohead’s innovative guitarist Jonny Greenwood, which meshes quite magically in the trailer [...]

2011: The Year Data Centers Turned Green

The amount of data the world stores is on an explosive growth curve. According to research outfit IDC, the digital universe will grow 44 times larger over the course of the decade, thanks to the rise of worldwide obsessions such as social media and cloud computing. And that means more data centers. But this data center boom comes at a time of high energy prices and heightened concern about carbon emissions. The days of cramming truck loads of servers into a room and firing up a bunch of industrial air-conditioners to cool them are over. Here, Wired takes a look at nine of the more innovative facilities that came online in 2011.

Friday Field Photo #163: View of the Paine Massif

This week’s Friday Field Photo features an area near and dear to me. A large part of my PhD research in the mid 2000s focused on Cretaceous strata exposed in the foothills of the Patagonian Andes in southern Chile. I’m going to continue research in the region and will be heading down there in February [...]

USC Film Students Practice Artistic Craft Through Games

Freshmen at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts spent the past semester playing an immersive card game, Reality. Participants collected cards hidden across campus that were used as prompts for collaborative storytelling projects. By Nathan Maton and Rebecca Thomas, originally posted at ARGNet School changed this year for the majority of freshman at the [...]

Dazzling Satellite Views of Vast Moon Crater

Aristarchus, one of the brightest features on the moon???s surface, can easily be spotted with the naked eye. Going one better, NASA???s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this spectacular image as it swooped down to just 16 miles above the lunar surface.

Glowing Scorpion Exoskeletons May Be Giant Eyes

Scorpion bodies are studded with eyes, sometimes as many as twelve -- and scientists may have found one more. A scorpion's entire exoskeleton may act as one giant light receptor, a full-body proto-eye that detects shadows cast by moonlight and starlight.

Bed, Breakfast And Bombing Runs: China Turns Soviet Aircraft Carrier Into Hotel

This is the Kiev, currently anchored in the Chinese port of Tianjin. Once she was the flagship of the mighty Soviet navy’s Pacific fleet. Now she’s available for business retreats, intimate getaways or simple relaxation. That’s because the Chinese have bought the aircraft carrier and transformed her into a floating luxury hotel. The Kiev will [...]

Alt Text: Top 10 Things Nobody Cared About in 2011

Rather than probing the heights or descending the depths of the past year, I???m going to talk about the top 10 things nobody cared about in 2011.

Anonymous 101 Part Deux: Morals Triumph Over Lulz

Anonymous grew from a group of merry, if sometimes cruel, pranksters into a group of crusaders. Quinn Norton explains the transformation in the second part of a three-part series on the history of the oft-misunderstood Anonymous.

11 Who Died in 2011 (And Were Not Named Steve)

This article is not about Steve Jobs. Here are 11 other technology giants who left us this year, and the amazing legacies they left behind.

Court Revives NSA Dragnet Surveillance Case

A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated a closely watched lawsuit against the federal government on allegations that the nation's telecommunication companies funneled Americans' electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. But whether the merits of the case will ever be litigated is still uncertain.

A Touch of Understanding: Gene Tweak Opens Sensory Black Box

For nearly 250 years, the intricate detail and complexity of skin's nervous-system wiring has thwarted attempts at understanding. But if researchers studying skin could be imagined as technicians reverse-engineering a supercomputer's peripherals, they'd have just traced about three lines back to the motherboard.

Thanks, Internet: Out-of-Print Blade Runner Sketchbook Surfaces Online

The production designs that were used to create the film's future-noir look were collected in the Blade Runner Sketchbook. Now out of print, the book is still treasured by fans, and now a full copy is available to read online.

Exclusive Preview: Revisiting Superman’s Roots in Action Comics No. 5

Superman’s origin story gets retold like never before in Action Comics No. 5, previewed exclusively on Wired.com. As the cover says: “It begins … again!” Written by Grant Morrison with art by Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang, the tale starts with the familiar cataclysm on Krypton and reveals “keys facts about Superman’s past” for the first time, [...]

An Overview of Firefox’s Coming Developer Tools

Mozilla is planning to add several new web-development tools to Firefox in 2012. Eventually these built-in tools may even be enough to replace the popular Firebug add-on for most developers.

Rocket Test Preparations – T Minus 20 Hours

We are almost ready for the double test tomorrow, Dec 30, where we will be testing engines SAPPHIRE-1 and BIG-LES. More details about this open engine test can be seen here in a previous blog post. The team behind active guidance for the SAPPHIRE-1 rocket, led by Flemming Nyboe, as well as Peter Madsen and the [...]

Google Thumps Oracle In Heavyweight Bout Over Android

There was a time when it looked like Oracle and Google would settle their bitter dispute over the search giant's Android mobile operating system. CEOs Larry Ellison and Larry Page actually met face-to-face for mediation talks. But three months later, this clash of the tech titans rolls on. The latest round goes to Google.

KleenSpeed’s Newest Car Not Just For The Track

An EV conversion company with a solid track history has debuted a prototype drivetrain and exterior design for a new 2+2 EV concept. The Kar is the brainchild of the engineers at KleenSpeed, the same folks who brought us the record-setting WX10 racer. They’ve also performed countless conversions, our favorite being the Mazda Miata they [...]

First Airbus A350 Hitches A Ride To the Factory

The forward fuselage of the new Airbus A350 XWB composite airliner has been delivered to the factory. This particular airframe – MSN5000 – will never fly, but it’s still a milestone for Airbus’ first airliner made largely of composite materials. MSN5000 will be used for ground testing to confirm the strength of the composite paneled [...]

Either Your Phone Plays Taliban Ringtones, or You Die

The newest craze to hit Afghan cellphones? Taliban ringtones. It's not exactly a hot trend: Afghans fear that the Taliban will kill them if their phones play anything else. This is what losing a war sounds like.

Thrasher Magazine’s Most Jaw-Dropping Skateboarding Pics of 2011

Ten photos that capture the world's best skaters at their moment of "maximum rad."

2011: The Year Intellectual Property Trumped Civil Liberties

2011 was a year in which lawmakers turned a blind eye to important civil liberties issues and instead paid heed to the content industry's desires to stop piracy.

Collaborative Film 99% Documents Occupy Protests

With footage from 75 filmmakers who captured imagery at various Occupy events around the country, the producers of 99% -- The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to complete the project.

Say Hello to Memory. It’s the New Hard Disk

"Memory is the new disk," Jim Gray would say. The database pioneer died in 2007 after he was lost at sea, but like so much of the man, these words about memory and disk live on, describing a new movement across the database business and beyond.

Pariah Is the Best Non-Nerdy Film of the Holiday Season

There’s not really any reason to write about Pariah on a Wired blog. It’s not a sci-fi film, it’s not based on a comic book, and the word “star” is nowhere near the title. Yet, during a holiday movie season filled with high-flying 3-D features and big action blockbusters, Pariah offers welcome respite: It’s a film [...]

Is Windows Phone’s Consumer Focus Killing It?

Microsoft has finally come up with a mobile operating system that sings ??? most reviewers and critics would place it ahead of Android, and consumer satisfaction among those who have bought Windows Phones also appears to be sky high. But Windows Phone 7.5 isn't nearly as carrier-friendly as Android, and unlike Apple Microsoft needs operators and handset companies to market and promotion Windows phones.

Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational

Time is eternal, but methods of tracking it are not -- and so a Johns Hopkins University astronomer wants to replace the Gregorian calendar, with its leap years and floating dates and 15th-century effluvia, with a sleek and standardized system for the world.

How Cornell Beat Stanford (And Everybody Else) for NYC Tech Campus

Next Jump CEO and advisory board member Charlie Kim on the process that selected Cornell-Technion to build a new applied science and technology campus in New York City.

Military Drama Unmanned Unmasks Drone Pilot’s Life

Fresh from an extended stint in war-ravaged Kosovo, and struck by many Americans??? detachment from overseas wars, filmmaker Casey Cooper Johnson was compelled to write and produce Unmanned, a short film about a drone operator and his attack-from-a-distance occupation.

Building Better Single-Page Web Apps

Single-page, application-style websites offer web developers a way to replicate the user experience of native apps, particularly on mobile devices. Indeed, the application design model — that is, a single webpage that never needs to refresh or reload — is the basis for some of the web’s most popular sites like Facebook and Twitter. But such [...]

Titan: A Wet World Not Far From Earth

Astronomers weekly announce the discovery of new exoplanets, some similar in size or temperature to our own planet -- but Earth-like worlds are not always far away. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, boasts many familiar features.

Top 10 Celebrities Not To Google If You Don’t Want A Computer Virus

Sure, a fixation with supermodels could compromise your relationship — but spare a thought for your computer’s wellbeing. Criminals use famous names to attract unsuspecting users to sites laced with malware. Cyber-security company??McAfee??has mined its data for an A-list of celebrities that you don’t want to Google. No, really. In order, with last year’s position [...]

Stealth Tech, Facebook Revolutions, Shadow Wars: The Most Dangerous Year Ever

When 2011 began, Osama bin Laden was still alive, U.S. troops were still fighting in Iraq, and Iran could only dream about capturing our most advanced spy drone. By the end of the year, everything had flipped upside-down.

Photos: China’s New/Used Aircraft Carrier Ain’t Scary

We already knew China's new-used aircraft carrier was, well, crummy. But new satellite photos of the Shi Lang show just how underwhelming the repurposed Soviet-era carrier actually is: It doesn't even have the surface-to-surface missiles common in the ships of its class.

Best of 2011: Pop Culture’s Tastiest Bits

This year was filled with weird and wonderful movies, music, TV shows and books. Here are our favorites.

Occupy Geeks Are Building a Facebook for the 99%

Geeks in Occupy Wall Street think it's time to build open versions of the social networking tools they've used to gather support and get out their message. Think Facebook for the dedicated 99%.

How Professional Throwers Are Building a Better Yo-Yo

Forget about the Duncan you threw as a kid. Today's yo-yos are the equivalent of Formula 1 cars, with alloy bodies, bearing axles and polyester cords.