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Addicted Gamer Sues Game-Maker, Says He is ‘Unable to Function’
A federal judge is allowing a negligence lawsuit to proceed against the publisher of the online virtual-world game Lineage II, amid allegations that a Hawaii man became so addicted he is “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing, or communicating with family and friends.” Craig Smallwood, the plaintiff, [...]
08.19.10 -
Facebook Opens Up Places in its API
Less than a full day after launching its new location-sharing feature, Facebook has opened up Places to developers. Thursday afternoon, developers gained access to users’ check-in data via Facebook’s Graph API. Developers can also access check-in data from locations, like restaurants and businesses, to see who’s checked in there. As we mentioned in our coverage of Wednesday [...]
08.19.10 -
May the Third Season Premiere of Clone Wars Be With You
runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience589264737001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences(); It’s been a long wait, but the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is nearly upon us. Judging by the trailer above, it’s going to be more than worth the wait when the one-hour premiere arrives Sept. 17. From the debut of Darth Maul’s fearsome heirs and dizzying battle sequences [...]
08.19.10 -
One Pair of 3-D Glasses to Bind Them All
If highways worked like 3-D TVs, you wouldn’t be able to drive Fords on GM roads and vice versa. It sounds crazy, but that’s the state of affairs with 3-D active shutter glasses. The glasses that work with your Sony television, for instance, won’t work for watching Monday night football at a friend’s place on his [...]
08.19.10 -
Game Dev’s New Album Invites Remixing and Chaotic Fiction-Making
Web game developer and musician Gabriel Walsh released his album, The Earthly Frames, Volume 1 in a unique fashion, supplementing his musical content with audio samples for remixing and a series of unique “fragment” files on fifty USB drives for the album’s release. While the fragment files may be enjoyed in isolation, assembling the disparate [...]
08.19.10 -
Conspiracy for Good: A Recap of an ARG by the Creator of Heroes
Conspiracy for Good was an alternate reality game and social movement that played out both online and in London this summer. Since this article’s initial publication, the Conspiracy for Good’s pilot episode has come to a close, boasting over half a million game downloads and over 4,000 dedicated members. For a brief summary of the [...]
08.19.10 -
GardenBot Brings Geek Power to Green Thumbs
Gardening is about getting your hands dirty and back in touch with nature. But if you are a geek like Andrew Frueh, a graphic designer who lives in Philadelphia, the hobby can take on a high-tech twist. For less than $200, Frueh has created a garden automation system called GardenBot that uses open source hardware (such [...]
08.19.10 -
A Very Trekkie Happy Birthday!
Today, August 19, marks a very special anniversary for Star Trek fans everywhere. On this date in 1921, a man named Eugene Wesley Roddenberry was born in Texas. Following distinguished service in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II, he became a police officer while trying to start a career writing for [...]
08.19.10 -
Video: Chatroulette Users Encounter Surprise ‘Exorcism’
Either Lionsgate found some really good actors or the civilians engaged in these Chatroulette exchanges with a pretty girl are genuinely freaked out. The viral ad campaign hyping The Last Exorcism targets seemingly unsuspecting webcammers who think they’re about to experience a NSFW striptease. As excerpted in the split-frame clip embedded above (reaction on left/provocation on [...]
08.19.10 -
Lego Wiz Re-Creates Zero-Gravity Inception Scenes
Images courtesy Alex Eylar and Iain Heath. Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire. See Also: Lego Skyscrapers Dot Futurama’s New New York Trekker Re-Creates Classic Star Trek Scenes With Legos Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds
08.19.10
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Why Are There So Many Porn Ads on Britney Spears’ Facebook Page?
Apologies for the link-bait, but it’s true: Britney Spears’ Facebook page is overrun by erotic pictures, many of them linking to pornographic web sites.??Either Spears’ “social media expert” is asleep at the switch or this is part of some sort of misguided marketing campaign to sex up the pop star’s apparently-still-too-staid image. Regardless, when her fans [...]
08.19.10 -
Focusing on Dark Energy With Cosmic Lens
Our view of dark energy, the mysterious force that is shoving the universe apart, just got a little clearer. By observing the way large clumps of mass distort their local space-time into enormous cosmological lenses, astronomers have zoomed in on a quantity that describes how dark energy works. “We have established the potency of a brand [...]
08.19.10 -
Cyan Worlds Brings Myst to Steam, Teases iPhone Game
Cyan Worlds, creator of Myst, said on Wednesday that PC versions of many of its classic adventure games are now available on Steam. Among the varied offerings are The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel, Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo, realMyst, Riven: The Sequel to Myst and Uru: Complete [...]
08.19.10 -
Konami Will Release Kojima’s Next-Gen Castlevania in October
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow will hit stores October 5, Konami said on Thursday. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 version of the classic series was created by Madrid, Spain developer Mercury Steam with creative input from Metal Gear Solid creator Kojima Productions. It’s something of a reboot — a fresh, slightly Western take on the story [...]
08.19.10 -
One Surf Scientist’s Quest for a Better Wave of Boards
Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have been donning their wet suits and hitting the waves this summer to see if an objective, data-centric standard can explain why some surfboards perform better than others. Benjamin Thompson, who hails from small-town New Hampshire, has been leading the effort through his PhD focus at the [...]
08.19.10 -
Beautiful Websites: Stamen’s Pretty Maps
We’ve seen some colorful map mashups in the past, like Hypercities and HeatMap, but few are as abstract and beautiful to look at as Stamen Design’s Pretty Maps. The aptly-named app pulls sets of geodata from various freely available open mapping projects and plots them atop one another. Pretty Maps grabs street-level data from OpenStreetMap (the [...]
08.19.10 -
Gulf’s Depths Probably Still Clogged With Oil
Oil released during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and suspended deep underwater appears to be breaking down more slowly than expected, suggests a new study. The greatest damage may ultimately be in the deep sea rather than the shorelines, a catastrophe in a black box. During the last two weeks of June, researchers from the Woods Hole [...]
08.19.10 -
USB Dongle Claims to Deliver First Easy Hack for PS3
If it works as advertised, a USB dongle could soon break the PlayStation 3’s seemingly hackproof seal. An obscure group called PS Jailbreak is selling a USB dongle that will supposedly modify the PS3 so users can dump backed up (aka pirated) games onto the system’s hard drive to play them just like legitimate copies. We write [...]
08.19.10 -
Massive North Atlantic Garbage Patch Mapped
Millions of pieces of plastic — most smaller than half an inch — float throughout the oceans. They are invisible to satellites, and except on very calm days you won’t even see them from the deck of a sailboat. The only way to know how much junk is out there is to tow a fine [...]
08.19.10 -
How Well Do Padlocks Withstand Bullets? Let’s Find Out
If I’ve learned anything from the movies, it’s that a quick shot from a handgun at close range is all that’s needed to blow open any lock. In real life, I’m not sure I’d want to be standing next to a chunk of hardened metal machinery as it gets hit with a bullet at high speed. [...]
08.19.10
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Having Trouble Finding a Good Sky for Star-Gazing? Here’s Some Help
Having trouble getting your kids to believe there are more than four or five stars in the sky? That’s life in the big city. ??The map on this page might help you decide which direction to drive in search of some genuinely dark skies for stargazing. ??Although the bottom line appears to be that if [...]
08.19.10 -
London Police Bust Suspected iPhone Crime Ring
London detectives on Wednesday arrested nine people suspected of a massive iPhone and credit card scam. The suspected thieves ??? eight men and one woman ??? are accused of using fake credit cards and identities to purchase iPhones on in the UK, and then selling them through a middle man for up to ??450 each. UK carrier [...]
08.19.10 -
Kia’s Pop Is An Itty-Bitty EV
Kia plans to roll into next month’s Paris auto show with an itty-bitty electric three-seater that looks like a doorstop. The Korean automaker didn’t offer any details on the car, which is about the size of a Toyota iQ but far more futuristic. The only thing Kia will say is it hopes to bring “innovative design [...]
08.19.10 -
Mild-Mannered Suzuki Sedan Tops 200 MPH
A heavily modified Suzuki sedan has just joined the 200-mph club at Bonneville and set a land speed record in the process. Road & Track’s Sam Mitani hit an average speed of 203.720 mph during a two-way pass at Bonneville on Wednesday morning, setting a new record for the blown gas coupe category. He just topped [...]
08.19.10 -
Video: Innovative Musical Themes Drive SOCOM 4’s Gameplay
SOCOM 4 composer Bear McCreary isn't just writing a pretty soundtrack for the PlayStation 3 game. He wants to heighten your gameplay experience.
08.19.10 -
The Psychology of Nature
In the late 1990s, Frances Kuo, director of the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, began interviewing female residents in the Robert Taylor Homes, a massive housing project on the South Side of Chicago. Kuo and her colleagues compared women randomly assigned to various apartments. Some had a view of nothing [...]
08.19.10 -
Toy Story – Inspired Build: The Claw
If you’re anything like most of us here at GeekDad, the Toy Story franchise is well, a Very Important Thing. And so is Lego. So when reader Will tipped us off about this awesome Toy Story Lego build of the famed Claw, we just had to share. A detailed description of the process can be [...]
08.19.10 -
Tiger Moths Scare Bats With Ultrasonic Clicks
It’s kinda tough being a moth. Not only do you have to go through the icky process of pupating, but you’re also the favorite food of bats, which use ultrasonic echolocation to swoop down and pounce on you when you’re just trying to have some fun, flapping around a lightbulb. But one species, Cycnia tenera, which [...]
08.19.10 -
‘Places’ Turns Facebook Into a Location Sharing Powerhouse
Facebook has jumped on the location check-in bandwagon with a new feature known as Places. Facebook Places has launched with four partners, all services that already offer check-in services — Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah. If you use Foursquare, Brightkite or other location check-in services there isn’t much to see in Facebook Places. The only [...]
08.19.10 -
Intel Hedges Bets With $8 Billion Acquisition Of McAfee
Chipmaker Intel Thursday announced a $7.68 billion bid to buy computer security company McAfee, a huge bid to secure the “internet of things” — the billions of chips in connected devices beyond computers. Intel is the dominant player in traditional computers but the action is moving far away from the desktop, and even from computers in [...]
08.19.10
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The Never-Ending Stories: Inception’s Penrose Staircase
Christopher Nolan’s film Inception features a classic optical illusion called the Penrose staircase, which folds back upon itself in space. World-renowned puzzlemaker and LEGO constructor Eric Harshbarger takes us for a walk on the stairs. “Forever Ascending,” by Eric Harshbarger The popular film Inception provides its viewers with many twists and turns in both storytelling and visuals. [...]
08.19.10 -
Stern Korean Culture Stifles Biological Predisposition to Blab
Stressed-out Americans tend to vent. They talk about their troubles, and call up their friends for validation. Most Koreans, on the other hand, would rather keep it to themselves. According to a new study, that difference between European American and Korean customs is so powerful that it shapes the expression of biology: A genetic profile [...]
08.19.10 -
Rumor Shootout: Google Tablet Will Be Made by HTC — Or Maybe Motorola
Today’s big rumor, coming from an unnamed single source by way of the Download Squad blog, is that a Google tablet, made by HTC, running Google’s Chrome OS, and available on the Verizon network, will go on sale on Nov. 26th this year. That’s Black Friday. Or, maybe not: Citing similarly unnamed sources among “upstream component [...]
08.19.10 -
Ponoko/Sparkfun Competition – Vote for the Winner Now!
Entries are now closed for our design competition in association with Ponoko and Sparkfun, but the competition isn’t over yet! We’ve selected our favourite 10 entries from the GeekDad Flickr pool and the comments left on the post, and now it’s up to you, the readers, to pick the overall winner. Have a look at the [...]
08.19.10 -
Army’s TNT Replacement Only Detonates On Command
The Army’s set to roll out a new explosive for large-caliber munitions; military-funded developers estimate that it’ll nudge out TNT “within a decade.” Called IMX-101 (which stands for Insensitive Munitions Explosive) the explosive is one successful result of a four-year Pentagon-funded effort that sought to replace TNT — military munitions’ longtime staple. First to go will [...]
08.19.10 -
Congratulations to Another Winning Dad!
Congratulations to Chris T. of Fairburn, Georgia, our winner in the Domo-nation giveaway that was held a few weeks ago! As you can see his daughter, Ripley, has already laid claim to the majority of the swag. Thanks again to all who participated and?? thanks to Domo???s licensing agency, Big Tent Entertainment, who along with [...]
08.19.10 -
Finding The Science Lab Fundamentals
On my first day of high school, my biology teacher Gail Liljestrand forever altered my perceptions of time and accomplishment by announcing that each student in her class would be responsible for thinking up, implementing, and presenting an experiment for the school science fair the following May. ??The notion of a school project stretching so [...]
08.19.10 -
Wallpaper Magazine Hawks Gorgeous Fixed-Gear for $4,700
Trust Wallpaper magazine to make a folding bike not just useful but desirable. And expensive. The brakeless fixed gear (natch) bike combines a steel frame by Kinfolk (a Japanese frame-builder) and Coat (a paint-shop in Portland) and comes with S and S couplings which allow the frame to be broken in two but add almost [...]
08.19.10 -
Save the Words!
You may not know it, but words are an endangered species. Every year, words that are no longer used are dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary???but presumably they’ve practically disappeared from the English language long before the OED omission. How do we save them? Simple: we use them. I know I’m often guilty of quibbleism or [...]
08.19.10 -
Little Black Book: An Open and Shut Case for iPhone 4
Remember when we actually used to carry a little black book? It may not have actually been black, but a little pocket notebook was essential if you wanted to remember a phone number, address or any of the snippets that today make their way into our cellphones. But what if you could combine the aesthetic [...]
08.19.10
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The Great Bacon Odyssey: Extreme Bacon Pancakes
So I’m back from vacation, and ready to shave a few more weeks off my life in the service of science ??? bacon science, that is. This week’s mission: to make and eat bacon pancakes. And I don’t just mean regular pancakes with some chopped up bacon in them; I mean the baconiest bacon pancakes [...]
08.19.10 -
Do Today’s Superheroes Send the Wrong Messages To Boys?
While Batman, Iron Man and Spider-Man might be impressive and powerful at the box office, they aren’t so good for today’s youth say psychologists. During last week’s Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (Psy-Con?) mental health professionals said that, while yesterday’s heroes fought crime and made better role models, today’s superheroes are too violent [...]
08.19.10 -
Storyboard: Naomi Novik Talks Temeraire, Dragons and Pern
In between panels, movie screenings and general crowd-watching at this year’s Comic-Con International, Wired senior editor Adam Rogers found time to interview fantasy writer Naomi Novik. Storyboard Podcast: Episode 28 Subscribe to RSS feed Subscribe on iTunes ?? http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/Storyboard/Storyboard_028.mp3 She’s the scribe behind the Temeraire series of fantasy novels, in which dragons serve as the air force [...]
08.19.10 -
Canon S90 Adds 720p Video to Old Favorite
Not to be outdone by today’s announcements from Nikon, Canon also has a few new cameras out, and one of them is an update to a Wired.com favorite, the S90. The new model is called the S95, and is little more than an incremental upgrade to its low-light-shooting predecessor. Thankfully, the S95 has kept all that [...]
08.19.10 -
A Page a Day Keeps the Doldrums Away: Duel in the Somme
Rob Balder, the author of the delightfully geeky webcomic Erfworld, has a new trick up his sleeves. He has written a short 24-page comic based on a story by Dr. Ben Bova, science fiction author and editor of Omni magazine, among other things. Illustrated by Bill Holbrook, Duel in the Somme is a “high-tech romance [...]
08.19.10 -
China’s Private Pilots Fly Under The Radar
China’s private aviation industry is growing with some serious regulatory shackles attached. Unfortunately for the growing population of Chinese pilots, there are so many restrictions on flying in the country, many are resorting to flying under the radar, both literally and figuratively. If you want to fly somewhere in China in your own aircraft, there are [...]
08.19.10 -
Aug. 19, 1839: Photography Goes Open Source
1839: With a French pension in hand, Louis Daguerre reveals the secrets of making daguerreotypes to a waiting world. The pioneering photographic process is an instant hit. Using chemical reactions to make images with light was not quite new. Doing it fast was. Inventor Joseph Nic??phore Niepce created a rough image using silver salts and [...]
08.19.10 -
Piranha 3D’s Painful Predecessors: The 24 Cheesiest Movies Ever Made
Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire. See Also: Vintage Mexican Sci-Fi Beams a Blast From the Past, con Queso Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds Wired’s Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time — Pre???Star Wars Wired’s Favorite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time — Star Wars and After
08.19.10 -
Nikon Announces Four New SLR Lenses
In addition to the brand-new, HD-video shooting D3100 announced today Nikon also has a clutch of new lenses. Here’s the list of names so you lens-lovers can quickly see the lineup: AF-S NIKKOR DX 55-300mm ??4.5-5.6 VR – $400 AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm ??4 G ED VR – $1,050 The AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm ??3.5-5.6G ED VR -$1,300 AF-S NIKKOR 85mm [...]
08.19.10 -
Double-Whammy Earthquake Caused Tsunami
A giant earthquake that triggered a deadly southwest Pacific tsunami was actually two great temblors, finds a pair of new studies in the Aug. 19 Nature. These results uncover an unusual sequence of geological events that is the first of its kind to be observed by scientists, the study authors say. The earthquakes, which likely struck [...]
08.19.10
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Mississippi Lawyer Drawn Into WikiLeaks Intrigue
A civil litigation attorney in Mississippi who has lent advice to WikiLeaks on occasion has found himself embroiled in intrigue and headlines after initiating conversation with the government over the secret-spilling site. Timothy Matusheski, who specializes in litigation around False Claims Act violations, landed in the middle of a he said-he said fight Wednesday after WikiLeaks [...]
08.19.10 -
“Shit I Say” By Me, Myself and I
Open publication – Free publishing – More twournal Think your Tweets are comparable to the pithy wisdom of Rumi or Nietzsche? Do you rage in your nightmares at the indignities of your Tweets’ ephemeral online existence? Or do you simply want to make it easier for the world to have your 140-character nuggets of wisdom available on [...]
08.18.10 -
David Petraeus: The Danger Room Interview
KABUL, Afghanistan — My 45-minute interview Tuesday with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was considerably less physically taxing than the last time we talked in person. While on a military base in Mosul, Iraq, in March 2007, I learned that Petraeus, then the commander of the Iraq war, was on his [...]
08.18.10 -
Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan
KABUL, Afghanistan — Ever since the Afghanistan war became a counterinsurgency fight, critics have charged that commanders’ cautions about using force only inhibit the fight against the Taliban. But in the shadows, NATO Special Operations Forces are engaged in an intensely lethal war of their own. According to information provided to Danger Room by Gen. David [...]
08.18.10 -
Facebook Launches ‘Check-In’ Service to Connect People in Real Space
Facebook announced a new Places product Wednesday evening that will let users check-in from a mobile device, see who is around them, let friends or the public know where they are, and find interesting, new places. The announcement extends, yet again, the reach of the immensely popular social network, in hopes that the new service will [...]
08.18.10 -
Shepard Fairey Auctions Pro-Peace Art, Studio Tour for Charity
Crossover street artist Shepard Fairey is offering a tour of his Los Angeles studio and signed prints of five pro-peace screen prints in an online auction launched by charitybuzz. Open to bidders now through Aug. 25, charitybuzz and Fairey’s latest auction benefits Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation, the grassroots social-justice and economic-disparity group that employs [...]
08.18.10 -
Stoned on Success, Eureka Invents Worthy Fifth Season
How did everyone in Syfy's sci-fi standout series Eureka celebrate the Tuesday announcement of its forthcoming fifth season? They all got stoned.
08.18.10 -
General Motors Is Going Public
GM’s turnaround is almost complete. Today the General filed the first reams of paperwork needed to go public, a move that will free the automaker from government ownership and pay back the last of the billions it needed to stay afloat following its bankruptcy last year. GM’s 700-page S-1 Registration form filed with the Securities and Exchange [...]
08.18.10 -
Portal 2 Gets a Release Date, Stephen Merchant’s Voice
In June, we heard the bad news that Portal 2 had been delayed to 2011. Now we know where it landed. Game Informer reports that Portal 2 will be released February 9 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Mac. The Valve source that fed Game Informer the game’s release date also mentioned that Ricky Gervais Show [...]
08.18.10 -
Giant Terror Birds Used Stabbing Beaks to Kill Prey
runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience586426320001', 'anId');brightcove.createExperiences(); When South America was still an isolated continent, terror birds were the creatures you didn’t want to mess with. Flightless, standing up to seven feet tall, and with giant, stabbing beaks, these birds [...]
08.18.10
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Suda 51 Update: New Shooter, No More Heroes Moves on PS3
Game designer Suda 51 is making a downloadable shoot-em-up game, he said at Gamescom on Monday. Joystiq reports that Suda’s company Grasshopper Manufacture will collaborate with publisher Digital Reality on a side-scrolling space shmup called Sine Mora for download on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In a separate press conference, Konami announced that it will publish [...]
08.18.10 -
Spacesuit Thief Pleads Guilty
A Texas man charged with stealing a NASA flight suit once worn by astronaut Sally Ride as she trained to be the first U.S. woman in space, plus thousands of dollars worth of other NASA equipment, pleaded guilty yesterday. Calvin Dale Smith of Houston is believed to have walked off with the light blue jumpsuit while [...]
08.18.10 -
Court OKs Covert iPhone Audio Recording
Using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation is not a violation of the Wiretap Act if done for legitimate purposes, a federal appeals court has ruled. “The defendant must have the intent to use the illicit recording to commit a??tort of crime beyond the act of recording itself,” (.pdf) the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of [...]
08.18.10 -
New Dungeon Siege III Screens Emerge from Gamescom
Square Enix revealed new screenshots of Dungeon Siege III on Wednesday. Dungeon Siege was originally developed by Gas Powered Games (Demigod, Supreme Commander) as a PC-exclusive series of action role-playing games that played similarly to Blizzard’s classic Diablo franchise. Dungeon Siege III maintains the hack-and-slash gameplay of the originals, but the new game is being developed by [...]
08.18.10 -
Beat Censorship By Hiding Secret Messages In Flickr Photos
Georgia Tech researchers have developed a tool called Collage that will allow Internet dissidents to insert hidden messages into Twitter posts and Flickr images in order to circumvent the censorship measures imposed by oppressive governments. ‘This project offers a possible next step in the censorship arms race’ The tool, which is implemented in [...]
08.18.10 -
Stress Hormones Could Predict Boxing Dominance
On November 25, 1980, professional boxing’s two top welterweights, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Dur??n, squared off against each other in a rematch from five months prior, when the hard-hitting Panamanian won a 15-round, unanimous decision over the champion Leonard. During the first fight, Leonard unsuccessfully went toe-to-toe with Dur??n, so the rematch obviously called for [...]
08.18.10 -
Perforated Blobs May Be Earliest Known Animals
Little asymmetric whatsits from Australia may be the oldest fossils of full-fledged animal bodies yet discovered, beating the previous contenders by tens of millions of years and pushing the evidence for animal life into an earlier geologic time. The newly unveiled fossils, which resemble sponges, come from rocks between 635 million and 659 million years old, [...]
08.18.10 -
When Spidey Swings Onto iPad, It’s Photoshop to the Rescue
Artist Frank Cho’s cool scene of Spider-Man clutching an iPad as he dangles over a fight ended up putting the web-slinger much closer to the action than the artist originally intended. A tight deadline from Marvel Comics and Cho’s faulty guess about the size of the Spider-Man and Wolverine logo left him scrambling to fix the [...]
08.18.10 -
A Design Contest for Web Fonts
The Web Font Awards are coming soon. It’s a new competition recognizing the most beautiful applications of web fonts in site design and technological achievements in type on the web. There’s no entry deadline or submission guidelines yet, but the contest will involve an actual meatspace awards ceremony and real cash prizes. From the Web Font [...]
08.18.10 -
Foxconn Rallies Workers, Leaves Suicide Nets in Place (Updated)
Foxconn Technology Group — the Taiwanese company that manufactures hardware for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and Sony and has been hit by a dozen suicides at its plants this year — is holding rallies at all of its factories to raise morale. The theme? “Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to [...]
08.18.10
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Photog Probes Secret Sites With Megazoom and Science
Geographer and artist Trevor Paglen has spent a career tracking the purposefully hidden cogs of U.S. military Secret Ops. Described by critic Paul Schmelzer as ???part Gerhard Richter painting, part Bigfoot sighting,??? Paglen???s imagery is both a best-attempt documentary of secret fragments that can be seen and a euphemism for all else [...]
08.18.10 -
Yeasayer Probes Human-Mutant Love With Kristen Bell
Fans of David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case will probably dig Yeasayer’s new, horrifically weird video for “Madder Red.” However, those with a serious dislike of human-mutant love might want to find their arresting visuals elsewhere. Directed by Andreas Nilsson and starring fanboy favorite Kristen Bell (Heroes, Veronica Mars), the “Madder Red” video debuted [...]
08.18.10 -
As America Grows Fatter, It Burns More Gas
There is no doubt Americans are getting fatter and fatter. The latest stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the number of people identifying themselves as obese grew 1.1 percent — an additional 2.4 million people — between 2007 and 2009. The number of states with an obesity rate of 30 percent [...]
08.18.10 -
Video: Skimmin’ Stones With Milo and Kate at TEDGlobal
Remember hearing about Peter Molyneux’s talk concerning his Kinect game Milo and Kate at the TEDGlobal conference last month? Well, as with all TED conference presentations, the video of the talk is now available online. You might have already read Wired UK’s recap of the talk, but now you can watch it as if you were [...]
08.18.10 -
Networks Proving A Tough Sell for Google TV (Surprise!)
Google TV would combine video cable, satellite, web pages and possibly one???s own home network into a single, searchable interface ??? ??with contextual Google ads, of course. Makes perfect sense for Google, a big company which is seeing its bread-and-butter search business flatten out. And without a doubt, television’s ancient, byzantine menu systems are long overdue [...]
08.18.10 -
New Standard Hopes to Unify Your Address Book
If you’re like most of us, you probably have contact and address book data spread all over the web — friends on Facebook, contacts in Gmail, followers on Twitter, and names in your local address book application. Wouldn’t it be nice if all that data were available in one place where you could see it [...]
08.18.10 -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Feels Like a Natural Woman
Inception’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt dreams of Carole King in a solo rendition of the singer/songwriter’s sultry anthem “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” above. Sure, it’s raw, but so is feeling like a natural woman. The warm, fuzzy performance was part of the Summer in the City series thrown by Gordon-Levitt’s crowdsourcing production company, hitRecord. [...]
08.18.10 -
Ambient Lighting Makes Drivers Feel Safer
Automakers are increasingly using gentle ambient lighting inside their vehicles, a trend that not only makes the cabin nicer but could increase safety and consumer perceptions about the quality of the car. A study by engineers at BMW and the Lighting Engineering Group at Ilmenau University of Technology found ambient lighting improved drivers’ perceptions of a [...]
08.18.10 -
Vimeo Spreads the HTML5 Love With Web-Native Video Player
Video sharing site Vimeo has taken the HTML5 plunge one step further with a brand new “universal” embeddable player aimed at mobile devices like the iPhone or the iPad. Vimeo’s new “Universal Player” is actually capable of serving several different kinds of video formats, but it uses a script to check the browser’s video capabilities. Depending [...]
08.18.10 -
Active Facebook Users More Likely to Stick With College: Study
Those obnoxious Facebook users who collect friends like stamps and post a status update every other minute are more likely to stick it through college than less active users, a recent study suggests. A study led by Abilene Christian University followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first-semester freshman students for nine months to examine how Facebook [...]
08.18.10
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Dell CEO Gets Fewest Investor Votes In Board Election
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell was re-elected to his company’s board this month with more than a quarter of the votes withholding support for his election, reflecting investor displeasure with his tenure as chief executive. Dell disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday that 25.1 percent of the [...]
08.18.10 -
Petraeus: Here’s My Afghan Redeployment Strategy
KABUL, Afghanistan ??? General David Petraeus isn’t planning to wake up one morning after July 2011 and order his troops out of Afghanistan’s provinces all at once. Instead, his idea is to slowly and deliberately remove small units, district by district, in an intricate process he describes as “thinning out.” ???You can reduce your forces. But [...]
08.18.10 -
‘Squirrel Baby’ Wants You to Win Tickets to Lost Auction
Killer Lost props like Claire’s creepy “squirrel baby” from the show’s final season will be on display at Lost: The Official Show Auction and Exhibit in Southern California this Saturday and Sunday. Get the squirrel baby’s back story in the video at right, which features Lost cast members and creative types discussing the bizarre prop. The [...]
08.18.10 -
Exclusive: Hear DragonForce’s Live Version of ‘Through the Fire and Flames’
Can your ears handle a blistering live version of one of Guitar Hero’s most notorious tracks? Now you can hear — exclusively on Wired.com — a new recording of DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and Flames.” Guitar gamers the world over know the name of DragonForce, the London metal band that contributed “Through the Fire and Flames” [...]
08.18.10 -
New York Startup Brings Sharing to Cycling
Car-sharing services are increasingly popular in the United States, particularly in urban areas where it’s more convenient and cost-efficient to borrow a car instead of own one. But many urban dwellers and visitors still find a car impractical because of parking, traffic and other concerns. Enter bike-sharing services, which slowly but surely are making their way [...]
08.18.10 -
August 18, 1990: B.F. Skinner Goes in a Box
1990: American psychologist B.F. Skinner dies. He is known for transforming — for better or for worse — the study of animal and human behavior, Burrhus Frederick Skinner embarked on his career in the late 1920s, during a backlash against the perceived overreach of biologists and naturalists who placed animals at different points on [...]
08.18.10 -
First Thunder Reboots Thor’s Blockbuster Origin Story
Everything old is new again in the debut issue of Thor: First Thunder, Marvel Comics' reboot of the character's origin story. This time, there's a darker twist that sets the table for the Norse God of Thunder's first blockbuster film.
08.17.10 -
Yahoo Mail Switches to HTML5 on the iPad
Yahoo recently revamped its webmail site to deliver a richer, HTML5-powered experience to iPhone users, and now the company has done the same for iPad users. Go to the Yahoo Mail website on your iPad and you’ll see the new, fully juiced-up HTML5 version instead of the older mobile version. Yahoo mail the world’s largest webmail site [...]
08.17.10 -
Overtime: Umpire Smackdown, HGH, & Eli’s Gusher
The end of FanGraphs’ epic #6org controversy (we think) – FanGraphs Nate Silver smacks down ESPN’s umpire investigation – FiveThirtyEight MLB adds HGH-testing for minor leaguers. WADA is not impressed – MLB FanHouse What’s better than new Timberwolves uniforms? New Utah Jazz uniforms! – Uni Watch There will be blood! Well, Eli’s Manning’s blood – Ramble on Rose [...]
08.17.10 -
Web Heavies Send a Love Letter to Open Web Fonts
The nascent Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is getting a boost this week thanks to some new initiatives being kicked off by the W3C, the web’s governing body. The W3C recently created a working group to build a WOFF into a web standard, and that group will be holding its first face-to-face meeting at the TypeCon [...]
08.17.10
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Let Me In Vamp Flick Leads Fantastic Fest’s Gore-a-Palooza
Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.
08.17.10 -
Yahoo Wants to Blind the Competition With Science
Imagine a world where your favorite webpage doesn’t even exist until you go there, and then it’s exactly what you hoped it would be, and it makes you viscerally happy. Prabhakar Raghavan is thinking about just that, and as the chief scientist for Yahoo he’s actually in a position to make it possible. “In principle, everything [...]
08.17.10 -
Prosecutor: No Charges in Webcam Spy Scandal
Federal authorities announced Tuesday they will not prosecute administrators connected to a webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district. Prosecutors and the FBI opened an inquiry following a February privacy lawsuit accusing Lower Merion School District officials of spying on students with webcams on the 2,300 district-issued MacBooks. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit [...]
08.17.10 -
Blizzard Details Cataclysm Special-Edition Extras
The special edition of Cataclysm, the third expansion for Blizzard’s successful World of Warcraft MMO, will come packed with loot. The $80 dollar boxed set for PC and Mac, revealed Tuesday by a Blizzard press release, will be available only at retail stores. The big box will include a 176-page art book, the exclusive in-game pet [...]
08.17.10 -
Lou Gehrig May Not Have Had Lou Gehrig’s Disease
Yankees legend Lou Gehrig died 69 years ago from what was believed to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, where is when various cells in the brain and spinal column become slowly diseased and voluntary motor function becomes increasingly impaired. In fact, Gehrig was the first truly public face put on the ailment, hence how it [...]
08.17.10 -
Sony Unveils Memory-Rich PlayStation 3 Models
A pair of new PlayStation 3 models add hard-drive space to Sony’s slimmed-down videogame console. A new 160-GB PS3 ships as a standalone console, retails for $300 and is shipping to stores as we speak, Sony said Tuesday at the gamescom convention in Germany. A 320-GB model will come bundled with a PlayStation Move motion [...]
08.17.10 -
NSFW: ‘Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury’ Is a Sexed-Up Sci-Fi Anthem
Unlike Ray Bradbury’s novels, the new song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” leaves very little to the imagination. Melding bouncy power pop with a string of sexual scenarios involving the aging sci-fi writer and his books, the video shows Rachel Bloom envisioning some pretty explicit escapades. [via io9] Follow us on Twitter: @lewiswallace and @theunderwire. See Also: Ray Bradbury: ‘We’ve [...]
08.17.10 -
Army Spy Planes Not Used to Track New York Bomb Suspect
The U.S. did not use military surveillance planes to siphon the cell phone calls of the Times Square car bomb suspect earlier this year, according to responses to FOIA requests by Threat Level. In May, Faisal Shahzad was arrested for allegedly attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square. The local CBS affiliate in [...]
08.17.10 -
HTML5 Reset Speeds Up Site Development With Handy Boilerplate Code
If you’ve been building websites for a while, chances are you have some boilerplate code you use to jump-start a new site — perhaps some CSS resets, a basic HTML structure, and so on. You tweak and refine your boilerplate as standards evolve. One of the best ways to improve your basic code is to see [...]
08.17.10 -
Sci-Fi Vistas Milked From Boring Old Earth
For the last ten-plus years, Allison Davies traveled the world alone, stalking unfamiliar landscapes. The resultant series Outerland ??? recently published by Charles Lane Press ??? is a welcome mixture of art and sci-fi; Davies mysteriously and deliberately omits locations and words to create an alternate world from the scraps of this one. The photographer is [...]
08.17.10
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The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet
08.17.10 -
Piranha 3D’s Painful Predecessors: The 24 Cheesiest Movies Ever Made
08.19.10 -
Apple’s App Store Director Sells His Own Fart Apps
08.18.10 -
Facebook Launches ‘Check-In’ Service to Connect People in Real Space
08.18.10 -
Drones Surge, Special Ops Strike in Petraeus Campaign Plan
08.18.10 -
Photog Probes Secret Sites With Megazoom and Science
08.18.10 -
Giant Terror Birds Used Stabbing Beaks to Kill Prey
08.18.10 -
Court OKs Covert iPhone Audio Recording
08.18.10 -
Rumor Shootout: Google Tablet Will Be Made by HTC — Or Maybe Motorola
08.19.10 -
General Motors Is Going Public
08.18.10 -
David Petraeus: The Danger Room Interview
08.18.10 -
The Web Is Dead? A Debate
08.17.10 -
Spacesuit Thief Pleads Guilty
08.18.10 -
Intel Hedges Bets With $8 Billion Acquisition Of McAfee
08.19.10 -
When Spidey Swings Onto iPad, It’s Photoshop to the Rescue
08.18.10 -
Mississippi Lawyer Drawn Into WikiLeaks Intrigue
08.19.10 -
Sex Is Stressful, But Good For You
08.18.10 -
Stress Hormones Could Predict Boxing Dominance
08.18.10 -
Foxconn Rallies Workers, Leaves Suicide Nets in Place (Updated)
08.18.10 -
Stern Korean Culture Stifles Biological Predisposition to Blab
08.19.10
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