operating systems
Windows Phones to Get New Start Screen, But Not the Full Apollo OS Update
6 hours ago
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Cloning Amazon Is a Dead End, Says Cloud Rival Rackspace
Does the rest of the cloud computing world really need to clone Amazon Web Services in order to succeed? Probably not, says Lew Moorman, the president of Rackspace, the San Antonio, Texas company that plays second fiddle to Amazon in the cloud game. According to him, some customers want companies like his to clone all [...]
06.20.12 -
LEGO Turing Machine Is Simple, Yet Sublime
Two researchers in the Netherlands helmed the construction of a LEGO Turing machine, a quirky manifestation of the classic computer science concept first devised by Alan Turing in 1936.
06.20.12 -
Adidas Brings Soccer Style to Golf Shoes
Back in my middle school days, the absolute height of fashion was a pair of acid-wash jeans, the bottoms tightly-rolled, and a pair of Adidas Samba indoor soccer shoes. I will save you photographic evidence of this look. The Samba was developed in 1950 as a training shoe for soccer players on hard, icy ground, [...]
06.20.12 -
Giant Hot Wheels Track With Double Vertical Loop and Real Race Car Drivers? Check.
A team of engineers and two crazy drivers are preparing for a history-making challenge drawn from the daydreams of every child who’s ever crisscrossed his parents’ living room with plastic race tracks: building, and racing on, a human-scale Hot Wheels double loop track, just like the one you had when you were a kid. The [...]
06.20.12 -
Amazon Expands Data Center Empire Into Australia
Amazon has expanded the network of data centers underpinning its massively popular cloud services, moving into the Land Down Under.
06.20.12 -
Now Here’s a MacBook Pro That’s Easy to Repair
The 2012 non-Retina display MacBook Pro gets a 7 out of 10 repairability rating from iFixit. Not being ultra slim has its pros when it comes to fixability.
06.20.12 -
What Remains in the Rock
Last summer, I drove hours out of my way to visit Archaeopteryx. The gorgeous Thermopolis specimen – the only representative of this feathered dinosaur in the United States – is housed in a small display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Even though the stop added hours to my marathon drive between Ekalaka, Montana and Dinosaur [...]
06.20.12 -
LG’s Quick Voice Aims to Out-Blab Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s S Voice
Built-in voice control for smartphones is growing. First there was Apple's Siri. Then Samsung's S Voice. And now LG is introducing Quick Voice.
06.20.12 -
Kickstarter Fail! How PaletteCase Turned Disappointment Into Good Design
When brothers Beau and Nick Trincia put their PaletteCase, a wool felt and leather iPad case, up on Kickstarter in April of last year, they were optimistic. Beau works at IDEO as an experience designer and project lead, and his younger brother Nick works as a designer and prototyper at Peerless, a lighting company in Berkeley, California. They had, as they say, been making things together since they were in diapers. Sure, there were a lot of similar projects up on Kickstarter, but the brothers had an exceptional skill set and a good idea: An attractive iPad case that???s easier to grip due to a hand-sized hole in the back.
06.20.12 -
Windows Phone 8 Unveiled: Microsoft Modernizes Its Mobile OS
Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8, announcing eight platform updates. Here's a deeper dive into those eight features.
06.20.12
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The Cloud and ‘Trickle-Down’: Big Data for All?
GigaOM Pro has published a new report that coincides with its Structure 2012 conference in San Francisco today, and one focus that stood out to ZDNet’s Rachel King is “how cloud computing has trickled down the employee food chain in the last year and how that is transforming companies.” GigaOM Network infrastructure curator Derrick Harris [...]
06.20.12 -
Want iOS 6? No Problem: Buy It Now From a Scofflaw Developer
If you???re a diehard Apple fan who desperately wants to run a buggy alpha version of iOS 6 right now, your only legal option is to shell out the $99 to join the iOS Developer Program. But your illegal options abound, thanks to a cottage industry of iOS beta resellers.
06.20.12 -
‘Institutional Failures’ Led Military to Teach War on Islam
A class urging senior US military officers to wage "total war" on Islam wasn't just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of "institutional failures in oversight and judgment" at one of the military's top educational institutions.
06.20.12 -
Diagnosis for Violent Psychopaths May Share Turing Test Flaws
A new exam to diagnose psychopaths may share fatal flaws with Alan Turing's famous "imitation test" for artificial intelligence.
06.20.12 -
Simon Crosby ‘Inverts Your Brain’ With Tiny Virtual Machine
Simon Crosby -- the man who oversaw the creation of the open source virtualization tool that underpins Amazon's cloud -- says his new company has built an entirely new form of virtualization. He calls it micro-virtualization, and the idea is to protect your machine from every malicious piece of code you may click on, including rogue web addresses, email attachments, and other files.
06.20.12 -
Anatomists Explore the Inner Wonders of Giant Squid
I want to dissect a giant squid. I never knew I did before I watched the Inside Nature’s Giants episode about the enormous cephalopod, but I do now. Long-time readers know I’m an unabashed fan of the anatomical UK import – a show that delights in the innards of behemoths and what those organs can [...]
06.20.12 -
Video: Rockie Fresh Talks Boots With DMX
Rapper Rockie Fresh's video tour diaries can be random -- the last installment featured squabbling over who had to drive the tour van and buying Adidas kicks. But the latest chapter takes randomness to a new level, thanks to a meeting with DMX: The Ruff Ryder MC gives Fresh and his crew the low-down on Williamsburg and his shopping habits when it comes to Timberland boots.
06.20.12 -
Microsoft’s Research Boss Celebrates Legacy of Alan Turing
What does Alan Turing mean for Microsoft and the rest of the modern tech world? Rick Rashid can tell you.
06.20.12 -
You Choose: Aston Martin Vanquish or Bentley Continental GT Speed?
Aston Martin and Bentley have taken the wraps off two new models in the same day; one an all-new flagship coupe that revives the vaunted Vanquish nameplate and another, hotted-up version of a recently updated best-seller. Pricing for both models hasn’t been disclosed, but each will carry a sticker deep into the six-figure range. Which [...]
06.20.12 -
Gigapixel Camera Sees Far More Than Meets the Eye
Researchers have developed a camera with gigapixel resolution -- that's 1,000 megapixels -- and think they can build cameras with 10- or even 50-gigapixel abilities.
06.20.12
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Markets: Shaking Off Facebook Hangover, Big Money Shows Its Swagger
After a month-long IPO drought, four companies, including three tech companies, set IPO terms in recent days.
06.20.12 -
People Want to Eat Meat Raised Without Excessive Antibiotics. Wouldn’t You?
A new Consumer Reports poll shows that 86 percent of shoppers in a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults said they wanted meat raised without antibiotics to be available in their local supermarkets. Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna reports.
06.20.12 -
Turn Any Pot Into a Sous Vide With This Portable Gadget
Being a foodie is expensive. Mashing up quail eggs with caramelized tuna can get pretty pricey. Fortunately, one company is hoping to bring one of the more expensive pieces of foodie-inspired cooking hardware down a price that's affordable while making it portable.
06.20.12 -
The iPhone in Pure CSS
What can't you do with CSS? We're not sure anymore. The little web standard that could seems to be capable of doing just about anything these days, including rendering a life-like image of an iPhone.
06.20.12 -
Foxconn CEO: iPhone 5 ‘Will Put Samsung Galaxy S III to Shame’
Foxconn CEO Terry Gou just can't help himself: When he sees an opening to stir up controversy, he goes all in. In his latest salvo, he disses Samsung -- and Koreans in general.
06.20.12 -
Next Up on Futurama: Cyborgs, End Times and Bender’s Brainy Ass
After years of turbulence, Futurama is flipping on the afterburners for its seventh season, spinning sci-fi tropes into superlative cartoonery. It's even made a comedy black hole like Larry Bird funny.
06.20.12 -
The Role of Cloud Automation and IT-as-a-Service
As a software company CEO, I have the opportunity to meet regularly with IT leaders from some of the world???s largest brands and leading IT organization innovators. Based on these conversations, it has become clear that IT organizations continue to struggle with the centralization of company-wide computing needs in the journey toward providing IT-as-a-Service. It???s [...]
06.20.12 -
White House Sends ‘Gun-Walking’ Docs Down the Memory Hole (UPDATED)
Thousands of documents sought by congressional investigators about a disastrous plan by federal agents to allow guns to "walk" into the hands of Mexico's drug cartels will now be out of reach. The Obama administration has asserted its executive privilege to withhold the documents -- just as lawmakers prepare to vote to hold the nation's top lawman in contempt on Congress.
06.20.12 -
Windows Phones to Get New Start Screen, But Not the Full Apollo OS Update
Microsoft has finally clarified the question of whether current Windows Phone devices will be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 Apollo. The short answer: no. But that doesn't mean Windows Phones like the Nokia Lumia 900 won't see the light of a different -- but still new -- OS.
06.20.12 -
Top General Accused of Blocking Corruption Probe to Help Obama
One of the US Army's rising stars stands accused of obstructing an inquiry into widespread corruption and mismanagement of the Afghan forces he mentored. And if the charges are accurate, they could end the career of one of the military's top officers.
06.20.12
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Game|Life Video: We Find Your Lack of 3DS Games Disturbing
This week's Game|Life Video rates Nintendo's first-party offerings at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in order of how hard they were to find and play at the show, from "hard" to "impossible."
06.20.12 -
Live Stream: Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 Unveiling
Today Wired is attending Microsoft’s Windows Phone Summit to learn what’s next for the company’s mobile operating system. We’re expecting Microsoft to announce a number of upgrades to its Windows Phone OS, including potentially unveiling its next major iteration, Windows Phone 8 Apollo. Upgrade incompatibilities for older Windows Phone devices is one question that’s arisen, [...]
06.20.12 -
Assange Breached Bail in Seeking Asylum, British Police Say
British police say that Assange reneged on his bail by fleeing to the Ecuadoran embassy and that he's arrestable if he steps foot outside.
06.20.12 -
Brace for the Apocalypse! Surviving the Worst in an Inland Lifeboat
First things first. Before worrying about food storage or access to clean water during a major disaster, you need to make sure you get through the first wave safely. But never fear: When the next big tsunami hits, a water-ready modular bunker called the STATIM pod aims to float you above the flooding.
06.20.12 -
It’s Official, CSS Media Queries Are a Web Standard
The W3C, the group that helps create web standards, has finished work on CSS Media Queries, turning the cornerstone of responsive web design into an official standard.
06.20.12 -
Big Tech: If Surface Tablets Fail to Post Monster Sales, MSFT May Not Care
Microsoft's core business remains licensing software to partners who make the machines that run it. Which raises the question: Does Microsoft even care if the Surface sells? Some analysts don't think so.
06.20.12 -
Why Exploration Isn’t Telegenic (and that’s a good thing)
In October of 2004, Natalie Harrison and legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes were crossing a glacier, high in the Ecuadorian Andes.?? It was a minefield of crevasses, treacherous terrain that was a constant threat to the two climbers and their guides.?? As Harrison approached a particular crevasse, she sized up the distance and leapt forward.?? [...]
06.20.12 -
Pixar Week: Monsters University – a.k.a Monsters Inc. 2
Disney/Pixar releases the trailer to Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters, Inc.
06.20.12 -
New Eruption at Alaska’s Cleveland
A remote Alaskan volcano has experienced a high-altitude eruption. Volcanologist and Eruptions blogger Erik Klemetti reports.
06.20.12 -
Pixar Week: GeekMomPoll: Our Favorite Pixar Movie is…
Seventeen GeekMoms rate Twelve Pixar movies on a one through twelve scale, the results are in!
06.20.12
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Microscopic Snowflakes Fall on Mars
Researchers have calculated the size of the snowflakes that fall onto the polar regions of Mars in its winter, and it turns out that they're pretty tiny.
06.20.12 -
Commenting Issues
If you haven’t noticed already, DISQUS has updated their commenting system and that update has been implemented on Wired Science Blogs. As with any update, there are going to be problems (and hopefully benefits). If you’re finding bugs/problems with the new version of DISQUS, please let me know so I can forward it to the [...]
06.20.12 -
Synthetic Sociology and the Human Computer
The rapidly growing field of synthetic biology is founded on the premise that, if enough of the genetic machinery of cells is understood, then scientists and engineers may begin constructing biological machines and computers for our own purposes. From a toggle switch constructed in genes in E. coli, which represented a primitive form of memory, [...]
06.20.12 -
First Look at Monsters University Trailer
With Brave releasing this week, it's easy to forget that Pixar has another big movie on the horizon. Monsters University, tells the story of how Mike and Sully met at the University of Fear, before 2001's Monsters, Inc. The movie is Pixar's first prequel and features Billy Crystal and John Goodman, returning as the voices of these lovable monsters. The cast will also include some new voices, including Dave Foley, Julia Sweeney, and Rob Riggle, when the film releases on June 21, 2013. Watch the trailer, then check out the other variants on the film's Facebook page.
06.20.12 -
Dork Tower Wednesday
Dork Tower is an online comic created, written and drawn by John Kovalic. It chronicles the lives of a group of geeks living in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin.
06.20.12 -
The Science of Bonding: Badinter vs. Bialik
After my nurse-midwife left, I sat in my hospital bed stunned. I'd been a mother for less than four hours and already I was failure.
06.20.12 -
GeekMom: Comic Book Corner — June 20th, 2012
Happy Comic Release Day! Welcome to another installment of GeekMom Comic Book Corner, where we recap our adventures in comics for the week. Included are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smallville and the Legends of Zita The Spacegirl.
06.20.12 -
Analysis of a Fake Water Trick
My niece asked me to write about this popular (and fake) trick with a glass of water. In case you don’t want to watch the video, it basically shows a glass of water. The glass full of water is placed upside down on a counter top (ok, this part is actually kind of cool – [...]
06.20.12 -
How To Build Reading and Writing Skills in Young Children
We've all heard the admonition to read to them, read to them, read to them, but there's so much more to consider! The GeekMoms tossed some of our favorite ideas around. Here are a baker's dozen.
06.20.12 -
Pixar Week: The Pixar Story
The Pixar Story is a 2008 documentary written and directed by Leslie Iwerks, and it captured my interest quickly as it delved into the riveting journey of Pixar Animation Studios as they chased their dream to create the first full-length computer animated film.
06.20.12
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A Plea To Freddie Wong
As a concept, Video Game High School web series is brilliant: create a high school tv show, but make the school revolve around video games rather than History or Science, put that show on the internet only, and have Freddy Wong-style fun. Although VDGH is treading new ground with internet entertainment by offering high quality camera and effects, there is so much potential being wasted.
06.20.12 -
Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery
The latest rumors circulating around the physics blogosphere suggest that scientists with the Large Hadron Collider will announce the discovery of the Higgs boson within weeks.
06.20.12 -
June 20, 1963: Cuban Missile Crisis Spurs Moscow-D.C. ‘Hot Line’
Cognizant that misunderstandings between JFK and Khrushchev helped fuel the showdown, the two sides agree to establish better communications.
06.20.12 -
Photo Book Paints Cosmetic Surgery Offices as Beauty Factories
In the new book, Singular Beauty, photographer Cara Phillips takes viewers into the heart of what she calls the ???industrial beauty complex.??? ???Cosmetic surgery is really kind of the ultimate expression of beauty and I wanted to go into the belly of the beast,??? she says. For the project, Phillips scoured the pages of fashion [...]
06.20.12 -
Infographics: Spotify Muscles Into Internet Radio, Makes Pandora Look Small
Graphic: Ryan Tate. Data: Companies. The online jukebox Spotify announced Tuesday it will offer customized internet radio stations, putting the upstart into competition with longtime netcaster Pandora. Spotify might lack Pandora’s deep experience in online radio, but it offers listeners fully 16 times more songs to choose from. That’s a discrepency of 15 million songs, [...]
06.20.12 -
How Cyberpunk Saved Sci-Fi
The Windup Girl author Paolo Bacigalupi analyzes the cyberpunk breakthrough &mash; and wonders what the newest breed of writers might say to leave us gasping with surprise.
06.20.12 -
Georgetown Cupcake Opens In Boston!
The business quickly outgrew that first shop and the sisters expanded to a larger store nearby, but now they're expanding outside the DC area and opening shops across the US. In addition to Bethesda, Maryland and New York City, the most recent shop on Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts opened last weekend. The grand opening was celebrated with a preview night with mini cupcakes galore and champagne.
06.20.12 -
Xbox Controller Gaming Has Developers Psyched About Surface
Microsoft Surface packs a staggering payload of cool tricks, but there's one unassuming feature that's likely to attract game developers: the USB port.
06.20.12 -
Washington’s 5 Worst Arguments for Keeping Secrets From You
The government's vast secrecy bureaucracy does two things with great frequency. The first, of course, is keeping secrets. The second is devising elaborate reasons why you can't know what those secrets are.
06.20.12 -
Can a Garage Be Sexy? Yes, and Here’s Proof
Garages, by their very nature, aren't the sexiest of structures. Talk to any architect and they'll tell you that attempting to craft a space for a few cars into their designs is the bane of their existence. This five-car, cubist garage stands as the artful exception to the rule.
06.20.12
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Pok??mon Conquest Takes No Prisoners
Nobunaga's Ambition stands out in my mind as a true anomaly; it was the video game I didn't like. Sure, I'd played bad games before, flawed and un-enjoyable affairs ??? E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on the 2600, for example ??? but it was the first title I'd encountered since Nintendo's resurrection of the home console market that I simply didn't get. I remember grainy textures and mountains of blocky, on-screen text. I remember arduous resource management in tinny, repetitive music. Moreover, I remember being utterly perplexed at finding absolutely no joy in it. Not having fun with a video game seemed, to my younger self, to be a deeply perplexing experience.
06.20.12 -
MoonBots Competition Now Open for Registration
Are your kids interested in robotics, science, or space exploration? Or maybe they'd just like the chance to win a free trip to Hawaii? All are on the table in this year's version of the incredibly popular (and fun) MoonBots Challenge. The contest, now in its third year, pits teams of kids against each other as they learn about space and develop solutions to problems that actual space explorers face.
06.20.12 -
Space Opera Without Explosions: Nathan Lowell’s Solar Clipper Series
Lowell is a master of getting us to care about his characters without having to resort to melodrama, and in science fiction that is a rare feat indeed.
06.20.12 -
Win Pearl Hex Skylander With FGTV
I decided that rather than hogging all the special Skylanders for ourselves we should give them away. After all it feels like we already have an unnatural number of figures in the house. This month we are giving away our Pearl Hex.
06.20.12 -
FireFly Controller Board Simplifies Rocket Science
Recently, my friend Mike Doornbos from Evadot got together with the small-satellite crew down at the non-profit Kentucky Space to try to fix an annoying problem. They wanted a standard "mission command" board that could serve as the basis for the brains, power and voice for different space applications without having to make it from scratch every time. They liked their solution so much, they decided to share!
06.20.12 -
GeekDad Puzzle of the Week: Potato Hamster at Large
Potato Hamster is at large. On Sunday morning, GeekDad Day, we found the top exercise wheel portion of her cage on the floor, leaving a hole, and the hamster was nowhere to be found. The folks at the pet store recommend placing cookie sheets with a light coating of flour and a peanut-buttered apple in each room to discover her general whereabouts and then a small trashcan with another peanut-buttered apple in the bottom, stairs of books leading to its lip to catch Potato. My Facebook friends recommend getting a cat.
06.20.12 -
The FPS Is Dead: The Unfinished Swan Is a First-Person Painter
There's an intriguing story lurking behind one game I saw at E3 this year, The Unfinished Swan. Beyond the emotive tale of the game itself, that of an orphaned boy losing an unfinished painting his mother left him, is the story of how Sony is looking to repeat their success with thatgamecompany.
06.20.12 -
The GeekDads Episode #116: Tom Lehrer Karaoke
Ken, Matt, and Jonathan look back at GeekDad Day, the WWDC announcements, and upcoming geeky summer movies. Enjoy!
06.20.12 -
Abort from Mars & Venus Missions (1970)
In the middle of the Apollo 13 crisis of April 1970, a mathematician at Bellcomm, NASA's planning contractor, calculated the length of time astronauts would need to abort to Earth following a malfunction during the outbound phase of a Mars or Venus orbiter mission. What he found was in no way reassuring.
06.20.12 -
A Google-a-Day Puzzle for June 20
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
06.20.12
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Nvidia Responds to F-Bomb From Linus Torvalds
Linux creator Linus Torvalds may call Nvidia ???the single worst company??? the Linux community has ever dealt with. But the chipmaker makes no apologies for its approach to the open source operating system.
06.19.12 -
Hoodie or T-Shirt? App Provides Fashion Advice Based on the Weather
The only weather app I've ever wanted is one that tells me what I should wear each day based on the conditions outside. That app is finally here -- and it didn't start out as a weather app at all. Starting Wednesday, the Cloth app will include integration with Wunderground for real-time, location-based weather stats, so you can easily dress for the weather outside.
06.19.12 -
Imagine: Lego and Portal 2 Together
Imagine bringing two geeky obsessions together as one. That's just what a group of four TFOLs (Teen Fan of Lego) recently did. My 16 year old son's MOCathlon team enjoyed working together so much that they decided to work on a bigger project: a Lego Cuusoo submission that would bring the popular Portal 2 game to the Lego world.
06.19.12 -
Stunning Blade Runner Animation, Made With 3,000 Watercolors
See Swedish artist Anders Ramsell's exacting, frame-by-frame re-creation of a beginning sequence from Ridley Scott's neo-noir sci-fi film.
06.19.12 -
Eucalyptus Chooses GitHub for Stairway to Amazon
Eucalyptus is just one of many efforts to create an open source software platform that mimics Amazon’s massively popular Elastic Compute Cloud, a web service that offers instant access to virtual servers. But the southern California company believes it’s in a unique position. For one, it has a partnership with Amazon. And two, it just [...]
06.19.12 -
Haute Health Care: Seven Products to Help You Live Longer and Look Better
Americans spend a fortune on health care, about $2.5 trillion each year. This covers everything from surgical tools to weight loss plans, But despite all the money spent, the aesthetics of these products are on life support.
06.19.12 -
iPhone App Scans Your Music Collection, Identifies All the Samples
WhoSampled.com's vast database has long been a source for music geeks to identify where their favorite samples came from, but now it's coming to your smartphone too.
06.19.12 -
Bane Makes Batman Very Angry in New Dark Knight Rises Trailer
Trailers for The Dark Knight Rises have heretofore been -- how to put this? -- kinda moody. Populated by slow, sweeping shots, doom-and-gloom dialog and plinking piano notes, they looked awesome, focused more on the drama and less on the butt-kicking. But the latest trailer for the final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy (above) is much different.
06.19.12 -
Face.com App Allowed Facebook, Twitter Account Hijacking
Israel-based facial recognition maker Face.com was the internet???s flavor for a day Monday when it announced it was acquired by Facebook. But what was not widely known was that Face.com???s mobile app, KLIK, which allows real-time face-tagging of Facebook pictures, recently suffered a giant vulnerability.
06.19.12 -
Report: US and Israel Behind Flame Espionage Tool
The United States and Israel are responsible for developing the sophisticated espionage rootkit known as Flame, according to a news report, which says it was part of the same 'Olympic Games' project that produced Stuxnet.
06.19.12
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HP Hitches Ride With Intel on Server ‘Moonshot’
In the ongoing crusade to build servers from low-power chips originally designed for smartphones, HP is putting its weight behind a new incarnation of Intel's Atom processor, saying it will start selling a server based on the chip by the end of the year.
06.19.12 -
Proposed Japanese Law Could Throw Downloaders in Jail
Unauthorized downloads of copyrighted material and creating backup copies of a DVD or Blu-ray disc could soon carry criminal penalties in Japan if proposed amendments to the nation's copyright code become law.
06.19.12 -
A is for Arsenic (pesticides, if you please)
In the early 20th century – enthusiastically supported by the U.S. government – the most popular pesticides were arsenic compounds. How popular? In the year 1929, almost 30 million pounds of lead arsenate and calcium arsenate were spread across this country’s fields and orchards. And how enthusiastic was the government? Well, in 1935, on [...]
06.19.12 -
WikiLeaks’ Assange Flees to Ecuadorian Embassy
With just a week to go before he may be extradited to Sweden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has applied for political asylum with Ecuador, according to a news report.
06.19.12 -
House Committee Approves Sweeping, Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers
A House committee on Tuesday approved broad electronic eavesdropping powers that largely legalized the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
06.19.12 -
Video: Sci-Fi Rockers Sing the Praises of Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicists rarely (if ever) get new-wave punk songs dedicated to them. But then again, very few astrophysicists are as cool as Neil deGrasse Tyson. Which is why "I'm With Neil" is such a treat. Chock full of the scientist's best media appearances, the video for the track, by California band the Phenomenauts, is meant to be as much of an homage to Tyson ??? the Frederick P. Rose Director of Hayden Planetarium ??? as the track itself.
06.19.12 -
Open Letter to Internet Companies: Tell Us How Much We Are Being Surveilled
Google just unveiled numbers showing an alarming jump in the number of government demands for private user data. We took the technology giant to task for its report's shortcomings. But at least Google is moving toward transparency. Too many companies, like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and the carriers decline to divulge the number of times the government seeks private data on its users, and now is the time they do.
06.19.12 -
Cloud Downtime’s Cost: $70M Since 2007, Give or Take…
The International Working Group on Cloud Computing Resiliency found and reported on Monday that a total of 568 hours of downtime at 13 cloud service biggies had since 2007 caused an economic impact of more than $71.7 million, reports said today. The big takeaway from the report: With the cloud’s average cloud outages of 7.5 [...]
06.19.12 -
Retina Display Teardown Reveals Ingenuity and Surprises
Last week, iFixit tore apart the MacBook Pro with Retina Display and found it was virtually impossible to repair or upgrade after the time of purchase. But the Retina display itself was left un-dissected -- until now.
06.19.12 -
The Bat Character That Just Won’t Die (It’s Not Who You Think It Is)
Stephanie Brown is the ultimate unsinkable Bat-character. That's the only conclusion I can draw after it was announced by Smallville Season 11 writer Bryan Q. Miller in a TV Guide interview that Batman will finally be making his first appearance in the Smallville universe, in issue #5, accompanied by a female sidekick revealed to be none other than Stephanie Brown as Nightwing.
06.19.12
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Q&A;: For Papo & Yo Creator, Game Business Is Personal
LOS ANGELES -- Tucked into an out-of-the-way corner in Sony's E3 booth was one of the best game demos I played at the show: Papo & Yo ("Dad and Me").
06.19.12 -
Why the Turing Test Is a Flawed Benchmark
Some of today's computer systems are displaying intelligence far beyond the capability of a human, so it's time to ask: Should a machine demonstrate intelligence by emulating a human?
06.19.12 -
How to Pass the Turing Artificial Intelligence Test
Are you human or a machine? Prove it, by passing the Turing Test -- a test of the ability of a machine to exhibit intelligent behavior.
06.19.12 -
JavaScript Decoder Brings High-Quality Audio to the Web
HTML5 offers web developers some, but not all, of the tools they need to build awesome online audio apps to rival GarageBand. The new FLAC.js from Official.fm Labs picks up some of the slack, providing a way to decode lossless FLAC audio in the browser.
06.19.12 -
CloudStack vs. OpenStack: Smackdown On, Who Wins?
Get your ringside seats, says Jonathan Feldman, a contributing editor at InformationWeek and director of IT services in a North Carolina city. “OpenStack versus CloudStack is a battle akin to the one around Linux distros,” he writes. In one corner: CloudStack, “an open source project that was acquired by Citrix (with the Apache license and [...]
06.19.12 -
Russian Ship, Loaded With Attack Helos, Turns Away From Syria
A transport ship the U.S. believes is carrying attack helicopters to Syria is now heading back to Russia, ostensibly after its insurance was pulled. But the ship's return coincides with a meeting between Obama and Vladimir Putin -- a sign the two leaders may be starting to cooperate on what to do about Syria's deadly war.
06.19.12 -
Your #GeekDadDay Instagram Photos
Sunday, June 17 was our first ever National GeekDad Day. Over 180,000 people in 50 states and 22 countries took our challenge to turn Father's Day into a GeekDad Day extravaganza. And, boy, did you and your families rise to the challenge! Judging by the tweets, images and general activity we saw fly by on the web, a fun day was had for many.
06.19.12 -
Tim Kring and AT&T; Bring the Truth to Light in Daybreak 2012
Fans of Fox's television series Touch won't have to wait until next year to learn more about the power of numbers featured in the drama. Showrunner Tim Kring has paired up with AT&T to produce Daybreak 2012, a transmedia webseries designed to delve deeper into the show's mythos.
06.19.12 -
Female Passenger Groped by TSA Gropes Back, Charged with Battery
An airline passenger alleges she was inappropriately groped by a TSA worker doing a security patdown, and after groping a TSA supervisor to demonstrate how she was treated, she was arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery.
06.19.12 -
Interior-Decorating Androids, Coming to a Living Room Near You
Science fiction robots tend to come from one of two production lines: helpful protocol droids like C-3PO or cyborg Terminators hell-bent on destroying humanity. Few sci-fi storytellers imagined a future where robots would be programmed to master the art of interior decorating. Fortunately for the design-challenged, present-day roboticists have.
06.19.12
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