Plastic Flash Filter Kit: Is That a Rainbow in your Pocket?

Photojojo’s eight-pack of colored filters is “more whoa-inducing than a double-rainbow,” according to the blurb. The satisfyingly hefty chunks of acrylic will color the light from your flash for selective effects, or sit over your cameras lens to cast their hue over the entire scene. Drilled to hook onto a keyring, and much sturdier than flimsy [...]

Take Your Kindle to the Beach With Impunity

I’m still tentative about the value of my Kindle. Maybe I’m just a bit old school. As our Editor Emeritus, Chris Anderson, wrote in Free: ???For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.??? They also work [...]

Found: Star Trek Ergonomic Advice in Berkeley Bathroom

Over in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they take their ergonomics seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they are willing to bring in the experts to remind people just how important is correct monitor-height: Spock and Uhura. This poster was hung in the lab bathroom, contrasting Spock’s spine-bending setup with Uhura’s comfortable, laid-back layout. She even [...]

Updated Tomb of Horrors Expands the Classic

The original Tomb of Horrors AD&D module, published in 1978, had a widespread reputation for being the deadliest dungeon ever created, so full of nasty traps and puzzles that a PC who wasn’t utterly paranoid was basically hamburger, and even the paranoid PCs fell in droves as well. In fact, it was so dangerous that [...]

$100 LiveRider Kit Turns iPhone into Bike Computer

Oh man. If the LiveRider is anywhere near as good as it looks, then it’s going to sell roughly one zillion units. It’s a hardware/software combo that turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a cycling computer, and it looks pretty hot. First, the hardware. It comprises a frame-mounted sensor which cable-ties onto the chainstay and [...]

None More Minimal: Tiny Mini Riser Notebook Stand

Laboratory 424’s Mini Riser laptop stand is so simple you could make one yourself in minutes. At $8 for two, it is also so cheap that you don’t have to. Laptops run hot, and you are almost obliged to get a little space between base and desk if you want to stop those fans kicking in [...]

Samsung Point-and-Shoot Has Flip-Out USB-Plug

To stand out in a commodity market, a new digicam needs a gimmick. And the Samsung PL90 has a gimmick so sensible and useful that it pops out and stands up to be seen. Literally. Samsung’s new pocket camera comes with a USB-plug. Not a pathetic little mini or microUSB-plug either, but a full-sized connector which [...]

RiffTrax Movie Mockers Seek Toke Jokes for Reefer Madness Take-Down

RiffTrax fans get a chance to hear their own wisecracks articulated by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin “Tom Servo” Murphy and Bill “Crow T. Robot” Corbett when the peanut-gallery comedians make fun of Reefer Madness later this month. The guys, slated to live-skewer the 1936 doper-beware classic during an Aug. 19 satellite-broadcast screening, are soliciting funny bits [...]

Overtime: Favre’s Faux Pas, Football Schedules

Looks like Brett Favre has some ’splaining to do – Deadspin (NSFW) Quite possibly the best bobblehead we’ve ever seen – The Slanch Report Every primetime game of the 2010 NFL season – Awful Announcing Why is 2010 the Year of the Pitcher? – Time [...]

Fantastic Four Downsizes to Three. So Who’s It Going to Be?

Someone in Marvel Comics’ venerable superhero quartet Fantastic Four is going to bite the dust this fall. But is it a character you’d kill off, given the chance? You’ll find out when writer Jonathan Hickman and new series artist Steve Epting release the first chapter of Fantastic Four: Three, due in September. The Fantastic Four comic [...]

Sneak Peek Inside London’s 2012 Olympic Stadium

With less than two years to go before London kicks off the 2012 Summer Olympics, construction on the centerpiece Olympic Stadium appears to headed toward completion well ahead of schedule. Tom Jolly, the sports editor of The New York Times, shot the video on a recent trip inside the 80,000-seat stadium, whose final price tag should [...]

Google Bails on Wave

Google is halting development on Wave, its web app for real-time communication. “We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product,” Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs H??lzle said on the official Google Blog Wednesday. The company cites slow user adoption as the reason for its decision. Google will continue to support Wave through [...]

Aug. 5, 1962: First Quasar Discovered

1962: A nearly botched observation of a distant radio source leads to the identification of the first-known quasi-stellar astronomical object, or quasar. Until the development of radio astronomy in the 1940s, our knowledge of the universe outside our own solar system was pretty much restricted to objects that emitted light in or near the visible [...]

Holographic Displays, Robot Eyes Hint at Your Interactive Future

Europeans Realize Dream of a Single Charger for All Cellphones

Cellphone battery dead? No problem: Just borrow a charger from a friend. Oh, wait — you can’t, because your friend doesn’t have the same phone as you, and his charger won’t work with your phone. That annoyance will end next year, for Europeans at least. Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, most cellphones sold [...]

Disney’s Go.com E-mail Going Gone, Stranding Users

The Disney-owned go.com e-mail service is shutting down at the end of this month after nearly 15 years of being a webmail service, leaving users in the lurch. Disney hasn’t made any public announcements of the service’s shuttering and did not respond to a request for comment. But as of last week, GO Mail users were [...]

Sharp Plans 3-D Cellphone This Year

If you aren’t thrilled about 3-D movies or 3-D TV, how about a 3-D smartphone? Sharp say sit will have a 3-D cellphone out by the end of the year that doesn’t require consumers to wear special glasses. The phone will also include a 3-D camera module, a Sharp spokesperson told Reuters. A 3-D phone from Sharp [...]

Barnes & Noble Shareholders Force Potential Sale of Company

Publisher Barnes & Noble, which traces its book publishing roots to 1873, is for sale, after stockholders watched the company’s stock price dwindle due to increased competition — not only from rival booksellers and device makers Amazon and Apple, but from every other activity in the world besides reading long-form text. Stockholders pressured Barnes & Noble [...]

Google Bails on Wave

Google is halting development on Wave, its web app for real-time communication. “We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product,” Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs H??lzle said on the official Google Blog Wednesday. The company cites slow user adoption as the reason for its decision. Google will continue to support Wave through [...]

Look Around You: Science Video Reductio ad Absurdum

runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience292352654001', 'anId');brightcove.createExperiences(); Look around you. Just … look around you. Have you worked out what we’re looking for? Correct! The answer is: hilarity. Remember being horrendously bored in school while watching science videos that had [...]

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories

In case you haven’t noticed, this site is currently being bombarded with a certain strand of conspiracy theorist. I’m still not entirely sure what these people believe in, apart from being absolutely certain that the government is developing brain-eating vaccines, spiking the water with lithium and trying to subdue the population with “reactive” medicine. While [...]

Androids, iPhones Prepped for Battle in Army’s First-Ever App Contest

Unleash the iPhones of war! The Army’s announced the winners of their first-ever mobile phone app development contest. And the general behind the program says some of the applications will be in the field “within a year.” A total of 141 soldiers and Army civilians participated in the contest, called Apps for the Army (A4A), which [...]

Minds Beat Machines in Protein Puzzle Showdown

In a biology geek revenge for Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue, human intuition has thumped artificial intelligence in the game of protein folding. Asked to decipher the fantastically complex structures of 10 proteins, a community of gamers beat cutting-edge algorithms five times. Three times they tied. Only twice did a program do better. “There are cases where [...]

Why Your Phone Can’t Really Replace Your Credit Card

You may very well wave your cellphone over a retail console to buy just about anything within a couple of years, obviating the need to carry around much of what’s in your wallet. That might sound super cool, but aside from learning a new swipe, not much else will change from the way we use credit [...]

Cond?? Nast Taps Viacom Exec to Explore New Publishing Platforms

Cond?? Nast president Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr. announced on Wednesday that Cond?? Nast, Wired.com’s parent organization, has a new chief technology officer in former Viacom CTO Joe Simon. Periodicals of all stripes are staring down plenty of challenges these days, due to the massive proliferation of alternate entertainment and information options in these connected times. But [...]

Win Space Invaders-Inspired Wall Decals

They conquered arcades in the '70 and now they're coming for your rec room. Win a Space Invaders-inspired wall sticker (pictured), courtesy of Vinyl Design, Australian purveyor of decorative decals.

Torchlight II Brings Co-Op; MMO Still in Works

Torchlight II is coming to PCs in the first part of 2011, Runic Games said Wednesday. The sequel to the indie dungeon-crawler will feature co-op play and include a free matchmaking service to help gamers find online playmates. In a press release, Runic Games’ CEO Max Schaefer assured fans that a planned Torchlight MMO is [...]

Ancient Crocodile Could Have Chewed Like You Do

Chewing has always been thought of as a strictly mammalian ability. But during the reign of the dinosaurs a hundred million years ago, in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana, some crocodiles were likely doing something very close to that. An ancient crocodile species has been discovered with molar teeth that fit together much like those of [...]

Building a Better Helmet for a Dangerous Game

As NFL and college football training camps begin preparing players for their upcoming 2010 seasons, the focus on the long-term damage of concussions is greater than ever. One industrial designer thinks he has found a solution: a better, safer helmet. Football helmets have long followed a consistent model: A single, solid outer shell with a thick [...]

DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware

A home-brewed graphing calculator called Open SciCal promises to put a powerful machine built entirely from open-source hardware into the pockets of quant jocks and statisticians. “This is for the alpha nerds of the geek kingdom,” says Matt Stack, who built Open SciCal. “The calculator used to be the ultimate status symbol among the nerdiest of [...]

Gmail Adds More Drag and Drop Features, But Only in Chrome

Gmail users can now drag e-mail attachments out of the browser window and drop them onto the desktop — if they’re using Google Chrome. Back in April, Gmail added the ability to drag attachments from the desktop onto open e-mails in the browser. This feature works on most modern browsers, like Firefox and Safari. Now, the [...]

Gmail Adds More Drag and Drop Features, But Only in Chrome

Gmail users can now drag e-mail attachments out of the browser window and drop them onto the desktop — if they’re using Google Chrome. Back in April, Gmail added the ability to drag attachments from the desktop onto open e-mails in the browser. This feature works on most modern browsers, like Firefox and Safari. Now, the [...]

Sikorsky X2 Breaks Helicopter Speed Record

Two hundred and fifty-nine miles per hour. That’s how fast the Sikorsky X2 flew during a recent test flight in Florida. The flight broke a record that had stood since 1986 when a Westland Lynx managed 249 mph. And Sikorsky isn’t done yet. The X2 is a technology demonstrator aimed at developing helicopters that easily cruise up [...]

FTC Settles With Intel Over Monopoly Accusations

Federal regulators have come to a settlement with Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, in a lawsuit charging that the company strong-armed computer manufacturers into using its chips exclusively. The proposed settlement would prohibit the company from punishing computer makers for using competitors’ chips or rewarding them unduly for using Intel chips exclusively. The agreement with the Federal [...]

Violent Dreams May Precede Brain Disease

Vivid, violent dreams can portend brain disorders by half a century, a new study finds. The result, reported in the August 10 Neurology, highlights how some neurological diseases may take hold decades before a person is diagnosed. Spotting early warning signs of the disease may allow clinicians to monitor and treat patients long before the [...]

CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source, Instead

For three years, Matthew Burton has been trying to get a simple, useful software tool into the hands of analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency. For three years, haggling over the code’s intellectual property rights has kept the software from going anywhere near Langley. So now, Burton’s releasing it — free to the public, and [...]

The Brain Eating Vaccine Conspiracy

This blog post makes me sad. It’s about a story I wrote and how it was horribly twisted into a dangerous nugget of right-wing paranoia. Last week, my profile of Robert Sapolsky was posted online. While most of the story is about the dangerous effects of chronic stress, the last several hundred words explore a [...]

4G WiMax Hot-Spot for iPads, iPhones

Once a novelty (a very handy and popular one, but a novelty nonetheless), MiFi-style personal hotspots are now popping as fast as new cellphones. But these 3G-data-sharing boxes are swiftly getting old. The new hotness is 4G, and the iSpot from Clear is one of the few around. The iSpot uses Clear’s own WiMax network and [...]

Dartmouth Students Live On A Biodiesel Bus

A group of twelve Dartmouth students and recent graduates are spending the summer living on a bus, and that’s where the similarity to your late ’60s summer sojourn in a VW Microbus ends. The students, who just arrived in California, are traveling in their “Big Green Bus” in an effort to increase awareness of sustainable living [...]

Comics Spotlight On: Quasar

Happy Comics Release Day! Reviewing Guardians of the Galaxy and Neil Gaiman’s Eternals reminded me of how much I loved with original Quasar series by the late Mark Gruenwald. There’s never been anything quite like this series and it’s criminal that it isn’t available in a trade paperback collection. Summary: Wendell Vaughn, eventually the Protector of the Universe, is [...]

Dork Tower Wednesday

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad. Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

Chevrolet Volt ‘Smacks of the Future’

.permalink #header #blog_header { background-image:url("http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/08/volt_winner_header.gif"); } Editor’s note: The Wired Volt Challenge gave four Wired.com readers the chance to visit General Motors to learn first-hand about the Chevrolet Volt, drive the car at Milford Proving Ground and write a review. This is contest winner Simon Metcalf’s review. The Chevrolet Volt looks like a sleek midsize [...]

Engraved Dice Signal A New Direction for Q-Workshop

Polish gaming dice manufacturer Q-Workshop has earned a reputation for cool and setting-specific dice like Call of Cthulhu sets, dice with dwarven or elven runes, giant 20-siders used as Magic: The Gathering life counters, and so on. As of August, they're mixing things up with two premium die sets ??? metal and "3D."

How To Make The Volt Even Cooler

.permalink #header #blog_header { background-image:url("http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/08/volt_winner_header.gif"); } Editor’s note: The Wired Volt Challenge gave four Wired.com readers the chance to visit General Motors to learn first-hand about the Chevrolet Volt, drive the car at Milford Proving Ground and write a review. This is contest winner Ron Focia’s review. Let me start [...]

Chevrolet Volt Is a Quick And Capable Sedan

.permalink #header #blog_header { background-image:url("http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/08/volt_winner_header.gif"); } Editor’s note: The Wired Volt Challenge gave four Wired.com readers the chance to visit General Motors to learn first-hand about the Chevrolet Volt, drive the car at Milford Proving Ground and write a review. This is contest winner Patrick Z. Wang’s [...]

Femmes Fatales Kick Ass in Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch is the latest movie from visionary director Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300). We caught up with him and his femme fatales at Comic-Con International. Find out what to expect in his latest ass-kicking action/fantasy/adventure film.

Chevrolet Volt Is Packed With Clever Features

.permalink #header #blog_header { background-image:url("http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/autopia/2010/08/volt_winner_header.gif"); } Editor’s note: The Wired Volt Challenge gave four Wired.com readers the chance to visit General Motors to learn first-hand about the Chevrolet Volt, drive the car at Milford Proving Ground and write a review.This is contest winner Guy Marsden’s review. The Chevrolet Volt comes across as [...]

Top 10 Things To Do at Disney World Without Kids

I attended the Romance Writers of America annual conference last week in Orlando, Florida and couldn’t resist the opportunity to try out Walt Disney World without children in tow. It helped that Disney supplied me with two one-day passes via a press request. In many ways, experiencing the Land of Mouse alone was seeing Disney World [...]

Review: Polished StarCraft II Lives Up to 10 Years of Hype

After a decade of hype, StarCraft II was worth the wait. Blizzard released the sequel to its legendary 1998 sci-fi real-time strategy game last week. StarCraft II takes the core mechanics of the classic RTS and gussies them up with all manner of refinements. Although the sequel will be familiar to old StarCraft hands, it’s [...]

Chuck Gnome for High Flying Fun on Your iPhone

What happens when ogres take over the kingdom and kidnap the Princess? Well, if you’re Chuck Gnome, you go out and take back your kingdom by catapulting copies of yourself at the enemy and destroying them. Or maybe Chuck is tossing lawn gnome statues? Or his friends? Honestly, I don’t even really [...]

The GeekDads Episode #73: Next Step – Geek Stalkers

The GeekDads talk about Comic-Con, Maker Faire Detroit and Matt’s newfound sex-symbol status. Enjoy! GeekDad.com is the parenting blog at Wired.com, edited by Ken Denmead, Matt Blum and Chris Anderson. It is a community of like-minded geeky parents writing about our experiences raising our kids in the digital age, and about our obsessions with [...]

Aug. 4, 1922: For Whom the Bell Tolls Not

1922: All telephone service in the United States and Canada is silenced for one minute to mark the funeral of Alexander Graham Bell. The tribute starts a trend that may deserve a revival in the 21st century. Bell was one of several inventors of the transmission of speech by electrical wires. He achieved patent primacy [...]

Looting, Cannibalism and Death Blows: The ‘Shock and Awe’ of Ant Warfare

<< previous image | next image >> In war, they’ve done the horrific. They’ve looted food from enemy homes — maybe even killing the women and children. They’ve employed suicide bombings. They’ve launched toxic attacks. They’ve even engaged in cannibalism. Ants, that is. Ant colonies bear similarities to human communities: That’s been fleshed out and personified before, from [...]

Bloomberg Sports (Finally) Gets Yahoo Integration

It’s been a good, first few months for fantasy baseball upstart Bloomberg Sports. First, the initial product launch in February -??along with its must-read companion blog led by Jonah Keri – got lots of people excited about the analytical power of Bloomberg LP delving into sports for the first time. Then, just four months later, [...]

FOIA Denial All But Confirms FTC Probe of Apple’s Anti-Adobe Rules

The Federal Trade Commission has nearly 200 pages of records related to a purported complaint by Adobe against Apple for banning iPhone developers from using its authoring tools to make iPhone apps. But, in what might be the most-official confirmation that regulators are probing the ban for antitrust violations, the FTC declined to make them [...]

Spike Jonez Puts Sci-Fi Spin on Arcade Fire Music

Spike Jonze and Arcade Fire songwriter Win Butler conjured the same mental images when listening to the Canadian band’s songs. As a result, the movie director is making a short science fiction film pegged to Arcade Fire’s new album, The Suburbs. After Jonez heard the fresh material, the director pictured the songs exactly as they were [...]

Classic Tetris World Championship Coming to Los Angeles

On August 8, some of the country’s best Tetris players will compete in Los Angeles for the title of world champion. The Classic Tetris World Championship, hosted by Nintendo World Championships competitor Robin Mihara, is set to go down in the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles. Competitive Tetris players Harry Hong, Thor Aackerlund, Jesse Kelkar, Jonas [...]

Bullied Booby Chicks End Up OK

WILLIAMSBURG, Virginia ??? What does not kill them makes them successful blue-footed boobies. Among seabirds named for their big, cornflower-blue feet, adversity early in life doesn???t necessarily put kids at a lifelong disadvantage, says Hugh Drummond of the Universidad Nacional Aut??noma de M??xico in Mexico City. Though older nestlings relentlessly peck junior ones and snatch away [...]

Pak Prez: Taliban Winning Hearts And Minds

So much for 18 months’ worth of declarations of progress against the Pakistani Taliban and repeated polling from Afghanistan about the unpopularity of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says that the al-Qaeda-aligned insurgent movements have the upper hand — and the more resonant argument. “I believe that the international community, which Pakistan belongs [...]

ArcAttack on America’s Got Talent Tonight!

The rumor is that ArcAttack??will be on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”??tonight at 9 Eastern, 8 Central. In case you aren’t familiar with ArcAttack, they are a “Technological??Performance Group” from Austin, Texas. They use a pair of digitally modulated Tesla coils to generate music. Accompanied by a robotic drummer, human guitarists and keyboard, they put on [...]

Sci-Fi Spoof U.S.S. Alabama Transports Morons Into Space

People who watched idiot cop show Reno 911! know Thomas Lennon plays dumb better than Will Ferrell, Steve Carell or any number of more famous clown princes. Now Lennon gets a chance to act really stupid -- in outer space.

New Guitar Hero Packed With Soundgarden’s Greatest Hits

The first one million copies of Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock will come bundled with Telephantasm, a 12-song greatest hits compilation from Soundgarden, Activision said Tuesday. The record will feature songs from all of Soundgarden’s albums and EPs. Also included will be “Black Rain,” a lost track that was recorded during the grunge band’s 1991 Badmotorfinger [...]

California Sea Otters Mysteriously Declining Despite Protection

The world’s cutest furry sea creature, the California sea otter, has been making a slow recovery since it was nearly wiped off the map by 150 years of hunting for it’s ultra-soft, waterproof fur. But despite being federally protected, the creature’s numbers are going down again, and no one is sure why. Annual surveys of the [...]

Microsoft Adds OpenStreetMap Layer to Bing Maps

You can now turn on a special layer in Bing Maps that displays maps from OpenStreetMap, Microsoft has announced. OpenStreetMap is an open source mapping project that keeps an editable map of the entire globe. Anyone can make edits to the map — it’s been nicknamed the “Wikipedia of maps.” The open source model has proven [...]

Microsoft Adds OpenStreetMap Layer to Bing Maps

You can now turn on a special layer in Bing Maps that displays maps from OpenStreetMap, Microsoft has announced. OpenStreetMap is an open source mapping project that keeps an editable map of the entire globe. Anyone can make edits to the map — it’s been nicknamed the “Wikipedia of maps.” The open source model has proven [...]

Little League World Series Expands Replay Usage

Little League World Series officials are expanding the sport’s now-limited use of video-replay challenges, starting with the kickoff of the 64th annual tournament Aug. 20. The rule changes will now allow team managers the opportunity to challenge disputed plays, much like the National Football League. Introduced in 2008, the Little League World Series’ original mechanism for [...]

BBC Spoof Look Around You Sends Up Science

Girls collecting iron filings? Ants building igloos? That's just part of the absurdist science in the BBC's comedic homage to '70s school science. Wired.com interviews show co-creators Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz.

Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books

The world of digital publishing can be a lot more complicated than deciding whether to buy a Kindle, Nook, or iPad. If you want to know just how complex things are getting, just ask a publisher, author, or agent about Andrew Wylie. Along with Amazon announcing its new Kindle, the major — and I mean, epoch-making [...]

General Motors Invests in a Bright Idea

General Motors’ new venture capital division placed its first bet today, investing in an Indiana company with big plans to build plug-in–hybrid delivery vans. General Motors Ventures is investing $5 million in Bright Automotive, a deal that gives GM a minority stake in the company and gives Bright access to the automakers’ vast parts bin. The [...]

U.S. Air Force, Army Help With Pakistan Flood Relief

As if northern Pakistan hasn’t suffered enough during the rise of the Pakistani Taliban over the last several years, the mass flooding that began late last week provided a new level of devastation. UNICEF estimates that 3.2 million Pakistanis have been displaced or otherwise affected. As many as 1500 people have died. Over 25,000 are [...]

When the World’s Biggest Fish Poops

Reaching 40 feet long and weighing up to 15 tons, whale sharks are the world’s largest fish. They feed by filtering plankton and fish eggs from a vortex created by their opening mouths — and as shown in a first-of-its-kind photograph of a whale shark pooping, activities at the other end of the fish are [...]

Review: Remixed Castlevania Forges New Fun From Old Parts

Konami’s latest Castlevania is a great mishmash of videogames past, an experimental hybrid that stands as the most innovative title in the vampire-hunting series in years. The 24-year history of the chintzy horror game franchise can be neatly split into two eras. The first was dominated by straightforward arcade action. The second, led by 1997’s landmark [...]

Inside the Red Machine: Movie Explores WWII Espionage & Codebreaking

The new independent film The Red Machine is a World War II espionage thriller aimed at puzzlers. Five-time American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champ Tyler Hinman delves into what makes this film tick. The Red Machine, Decrypted by Tyler Hinman Puzzle fans and history buffs alike know of German cryptography during World War II and the Allies’ attempts [...]

Sex Is Rough for Thomas Jane in Hung

What's it like to play a male prostitute on TV? We asked actor Thomas Jane from Hung, who says having sex in front of 150 crew members is about as fun as "wrapping dead fish."

Where’s the Future? Will Ferrell’s Tour of Tech That Never Took

#nav-hide { display:none;} #adSkinLayer1 {background:url("/magazine/wp-content/images/18-08/wf_background.gif") no-repeat fixed center top transparent;} .wrapper {width:660px; background: url(/magazine/wp-content/images/18-08/wf_whatever_hed.gif) no-repeat center top; padding-top:80px; margin-top: 40px;} #future-container-p2 { width:430px; display:inline; float:left} #future-container-p1 .future-bit-pullquote { width: 200px; padding: 20px 0px 20px 20px; float: right; font-size: 2.5em; border: none; } #future-container-p1 .future-bit-2, #future-container-p1 .future-bit-3 { width: 420px; padding: 20px 20px 20px 0;border-right: solid 10px #000;} #future-container-p1 .future-bit-2 { [...]

The Itch of Curiosity

Curiosity is one of those personality traits that gets short scientific shrift. It strikes me as a really important mental habit – how many successful people are utterly incurious? – but it’s also extremely imprecise. What does it mean to be interested in seemingly irrelevant ideas? And how can we measure that interest???While we’ve analyzed [...]

William Gibson Counts Down to Zero History

Sci-fi visionary and father of cyberspace William Gibson returns to the 21st century’s literary wasteland with Zero History. And he’s got the rocking teaser video to prove it. “Some geezer reads some dialogue from Zero History,” the Neuromancer and All Tomorrow’s Parties author tweeted Monday, adding a link to the clip above and commenting that he [...]

Help Out Kids Need to Read By Way of Hyde and Geek’s 36-Hour Tweetathon

We at GeekDad are huge fans of kids, of reading and of pretty much any initiative that encourages kids to read. If you’re a regular reader, you may recall the articles we’ve had about the Kids Need to Read (KNTR) organization. KNTR is dedicated to providing underfunded school libraries with books, which by itself is [...]

Army’s Vaccine Plan: Inject Troops With Gas-Propelled, Electro-Charged DNA

The Army’s got a one-two punch to perfect vaccinations and offer scientists the ability to quickly develop inoculations that stave off new dangers. First, they’ll shoot troops up using a “gene gun,” that’s filled with DNA-based vaccines. Then they’ll follow it up with “short electrical pulses to the delivery site.” The Pentagon’s still [...]

Robot Reboot: Magnus Fights Thug-Bots in New Comic

Originally hatched in the 1960s, comic book robot killer Magnus launches a fresh assault on gangster-employed automatons Wednesday when Dark Horse Comics reactivates the cult figure with a new set of stories. In the inaugural issue, former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter revisits the continent-spanning city of North Am, where mobsters dispatch “thug-bots” to kidnap a [...]

Hacker Wonderland: DefCon 18 in Photos

<< previous image | next image >> LAS VEGAS — Roughly 10,000 computer hacking enthusiasts, poseurs, geeks, nerds and government agents gathered for DefCon last weekend. In its 18th year, the world’s largest hacker convention draws people from all walks of life to learn about the latest hacking techniques. Talks this year ranged from hardware hacker Chris [...]

Aug. 3, 1977: The TRS-80 Is Bad, and That Ain’t Trash Talk

1977: In a New York City news conference Tandy Corp of Texas announces that it will manufacture the first mass-produced personal computer. The TRS-80 — lovingly called the ???Trash 80??? — would be an early rock star in the PC era and give the flagging Radio Shack franchise bragging rights as ???biggest name in [...]

Overtime: Marathons, Messi, and the Infield Fly

Starting now, Playbook will end each workday with a roundup of links to stories that are maybe not-so-Wired, but which caught our attention anyway. Enjoy. Catching up with Bengals coach Mike Zimmer, 10 months after his wife suddenly died ??? ESPN 100 marathons in 140 days? It’s all for a good cause ??? Westchester News Online City of [...]

Video: Chemical Brothers Cook Eyeballs With Waveforms

The Chemical Brothers’ latest effort, Further, pulses with sonic undulations. They’re all quite hypnotically transmitted in the video for the group’s newest single, “Another World,” out Aug. 17 on download and Sept. 28 on vinyl. Flying high between narcotic thumps and ecstatic outbursts, “Another World” is a bipolar pleasure. The video adds a neon wonderland of [...]

Trailer: Sequestro Documents Cops’ Anti-Kidnapping Efforts

This Brazilian documentary chronicles the efforts of the S??o Paulo police department's anti-kidnapping division from 2005 through 2009.

Adidas miCoach App Sets Sights Square on Nike+

When you pull up the homepage for Nike+ ??? the ground-breaking exercise system that combines a thumb-size sensor with iPod/iPhone functionality to track your daily workout regimen ??? there’s a constantly scrolling number in the lower-right side of the screen. It’s the total number of miles run by Nike+ users since the service went live [...]

Is Your Browser Ready for HTML5?

The HTML5 era is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed yet. Browsers vary in their levels of support for the emerging standard, and developers are pushing the envelope with hacks, experiments and proof-of-concept demos. If you want to find out how well-equipped your browser is for the HTML5 future, just pay a visit HTML5test.com. The [...]

Latest Launch Brings China Closer to ‘GPS’ of Its Own

At 5:30 on Sunday morning, the Chinese government fired a Long March 3A rocket into orbit. It carried a navigation satellite — the fifth in a planned constellation of 30 or more Beidou orbiters that Beijing hopes will soon rival America’s Global Positioning System. For years, the U.S. Air Force has owned and operated the system [...]

‘GameTrekking’ Melds Indie Game Design, Travel Writing

Indie game designer Jordan Magnuson will travel Asia and create games inspired by his journey. The project, called GameTrekking, is being funded through Kickstarter. If Magnuson can get raise enough money to pay for his excursion through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, he’ll spend his free time creating 10 to 15 free-to-play games inspired by the [...]

Electronic Arts Unveils User-Gen Platform Game Create

Looks like LittleBigPlanet has some competition. Electronic Arts unveiled Create, a sandbox platform game fueled by gamers’ creativity, on Monday morning. Due out in November for the Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and Mac, the game is being developed by EA Bright Light studios in the United Kingdom. The sandbox game will allow players to tackle [...]

NASCAR Heralds Milestone in Solar-Powered Sports

Leave it to the gas guzzlers of NASCAR to pull off building one of the United States’ largest alt-energy installations. With the help of nearly 40,000 solar panels tucked away in an adjacent lot, yesterday’s running of the Pennsylvania 500 helped mark Pocono Raceway as the largest sports facility in the world to run on solar [...]

SamplePlayer Makes Your Browser Sing, Sans Flash

It runs in the browser, it doesn't use Flash and it makes a whole lot of bleepy noises.

RoboCop, Dirty Harry Go Retro in Rolling Roadshow Posters

See Also: Gowalla's RoboCop Trip Guides You Through Crumbling Detroit Exclusive: Tribbles Infest Alamo Drafthouse's New Star Trek Posters Tusken Triumph: Raider Poster Sells Out in 25 Minutes Flat

iPhone ‘Pull To Refresh’ in JavaScript

When it first arrived in iPhone apps, the simple “pull to refresh” action was instantly hailed as a genius bit of user interaction engineering. It’s an ultra-intuitive way of refreshing the displayed page content by simply pulling the page down with your thumb, then releasing it — sort of like pulling a lever on a slot [...]

Navy Works to Laser-Proof Its Drones

In May and June, the U.S. Navy sent four drones crashing into the Pacific Ocean, after blasting them with a prototype laser weapon. If follow-up tests are successful, there’s a chance the ray gun might be ready for deployment some time around 2016. Other countries’ energy weapons will come years afterward — if they [...]

Grand Prix Hits Steel City

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — Goodwood, Monterey, Sebring. These are places steeped in racing history. The mere mention of these venues brings to mind power, passion and speed. Another city known for sports, but not necessarily motorsports, hopes to evoke some of that same sentiment — Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix has since 1983 grown into a [...]

Trucks Get Dual Clutch Transmissions

Drivers of Mitsubishi Fuso box trucks will soon be able to get their hands on the same transmission technology found in the Evo X — not to mention the Bugatti Veyron. Daimler, Mitsubishi Fuso’s parent company, announced last week that they’d soon be offering a dual clutch transmission (DCT) on their line of commercial trucks — [...]

Tesla Subsidy Vanishing Amid Electric Vehicle Boom

Twenty years ago the California Air Resources Board established the zero emissions vehicle mandate requiring the largest automakers to build and sell electric vehicles. Twelve states adopted the same aggressive targets, creating what remains the strongest regulatory force driving the development of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. With General Motors and Nissan delivering [...]

August 2, 1790: New Nation Comes to Its Census

1790: In keeping with a tradition at least as old as the Romans and constitutionally mandated by the Founding Fathers, the first U.S. Census begins. Federal representatives fanned out across the original 13 states, tabulating information on American households, just as they have every 10 years since. The information was used to estimate taxes, assign [...]

Geek Culture’s Fiercest Female Ass-Kickers, as Picked by You

See Also: Geek Culture’s 26 Most Awesome Female Ass-Kickers