5 March - A visit to Wired

ARIZONA BORDERS AND CITIZEN SAFETY... (Photo credit: roberthuffstutter)

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Godfathers of Bangalore © WIRED (Photo credit: lecercle)

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Americans are protesting, but what keeps full-scale riots from breaking out ?

Why do we live in a world that's petrified of women who love sex ?

Michael Jackson's entire back catalog stolen by hackers

TED 2012: Will Technology Save Us All, or Will It Tear Us Apart?open original article
Op-Ed: Why YouTube Matters to the Science of Depressionopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 09:50 from Wired Top Stories by Nate Greenslit

An anthropologist of science looks at YouTube, where parodies of Zoloft advertisements have reclaimed the scientific and cultural narrative of depression from a handful of corporate behemoths.





Education in the Cloud: Exploring Opportunitiesopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:11 from Wired Top Stories by Kyle Johnson

While cloud-sourcing IT infrastructure can liberate institution resources to focus on educational activities, there have been, to date, very few cloud solutions that speak directly to the core business of higher education, teaching and learning. But newer entrants such as MIT's Open Courseware and Udacity have had a deeper focus on higher education.

Facebook and Others Aim to Make the Mobile Web a Competitive App Platformopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 07:50 from Wired Top Stories by Ryan Paul - Ars Technica

Facebook, Mozilla and others have teamed up to create a new web standards group to work on creating more powerful mobile web tools. The goal of the new Core Mobile Web Platform community group is to make sure that mobile web standards keep pace with competing platform-native applications.
1 in 8 Chance of Catastrophic Solar Megastorm by 2020open original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Adam Mann

The Earth has a roughly 12 percent chance of witnessing an enormous megaflare erupting from the sun in the next decade. This event could potentially cause trillions of dollars' worth of damage and take up to a decade to recover from.

 Pentagon Helps New Stealth Fighter Cheat on Key Performance Testopen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 14:00 from Wired Top Stories by David Axe

America's next stealth fighter has passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability, allowing the nearly $400-billion program to move closer to full-rate production. But the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter cleared the mid-February review only because a Pentagon council agreed to relax the grading scale. That's right: the military helped the F-35 essentially cheat on its mid-term exam.

The Air Force Still Doesn't Know What's Choking Its Stealth Fighter Pilotsopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 13:16 from Wired Top Stories by Robert Beckhusen

America's newest stealth fighters have a major problem: their pilots can't breathe, due to some sort of malfunction in the planes' oxygen-generation systems. For months, the Air Force has been studying the problem, which temporarily grounded the entire fleet of F-22 Raptors and may have contributed to a pilot's death. Today, the Air Force admitted they still don't know exactly what's causing the issue.


Air Force Experimental Drone Uses Computing Power to Smooth High Flightsopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 13:07 from Wired Top Stories by Jason Paur

When a vibration in an aircraft's wing or tail matches the natural frequency of that structure, the results of that "flutter" can be catastrophic. If the vibration isn't dampened over time, it can grow, causing the structure to flex uncontrollably and potentially fail. That's why the Air Force, NASA and Lockheed Martin are teaming up for new ways to fight flutter with a new experimental drone. Meet the X-56A.

Feds Move to Extradite Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcomopen original article

Chevrolet Volt Named European Car of the Yearopen original article

Saturn's Largest Moon Seen in Unprecedented Detailopen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 13:26 from Wired Top Stories by Dave Mosher

A massive collection of new studies about Titan, Saturn's largest moon, describe the frigid mini-world in unprecedented detail.

10 Years of Gorgeous Images of Earth From Spaceopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 17:09 from Wired Top Stories by Betsy Mason

To celebrate the Envisat satellite's 10th anniversary, we've selected a few of its most beautiful images for this gallery. Good luck deciding which one to use as wallpaper for your computer desktop.
Air Force Set to Shoot Down Its Own Giant Spy Blimpopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Noah Shachtman

After spending more than $140 million, the Air Force is poised to pull the plug on its ambitious project to send a king-sized, all-seeing spy blimp to Afghanistan. Which is a bit of a strange move: Not only is the scheduled first flight of the 370-foot-long "Blue Devil Block 2" airship less than six weeks away, but just yesterday, a top Air Force official bragged to Congress about the blimp's predecessor, the "Blue Devil Block 1" program.


Number 1 on Army's Shopping List: Wireless Broadbandopen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

The Army's number one purchasing priority doesn't shoot. You can't ride in it, and it won't protect you from bullets or bombs. It's a data network.

Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money?open original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Robert McMillan

Many security pros don't use antivirus software. And they believe that many businesses are spending too much money on AV software and other security tools. The fact is that most criminals are smart enough to test their attacks against popular antivirus products. There's even a free website called Virus Total that lets you see whether any of the most popular malware scanning engines will spot your Trojan program or virus. So when new attacks pop up on the internet, it's common for them to completely evade antivirus detection.

A Button That Makes You Forget: On Deleting My Google Web Historyopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 14:29 from Wired Top Stories by Tim Carmody

It's not Google that I don't accept; only I most respectfully return to them the ticket.




Put Some Clothes On: Video Calling Just Got Easieropen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 15:57 from Wired Top Stories by Rick Broida

TelyHD is a high-def but reasonably priced webcam that's blissfully easy to use and tied to everybody's favorite free video-calling service, Skype.

Eagle Cam Update: 3 Eggs in the Nestopen original article

Cloud to Deliver 14M New Jobs (Half in China, India)open original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 15:39 from Wired Top Stories by Mike Barton

A new research report commission by Microsoft finds that 14 million jobs will be created by 2015 thanks to cloud computing, but about half of the new jobs will be in India and China. Should we feel good about this report? Is it fair to extract the cloud as job creator without considering its net effect?

How Red Hat Became A Billion Dollar Businessopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:24 from Wired Top Stories by Ars Technica

A decade ago, Linux developer Red Hat faced a decision that would make or break the company: whether to stop producing the very product that gave Red Hat its name. To move from small player to big-time enterprise software competitor, Paul Cormier argued that Red Hat had to ditch the freely downloadable Red Hat Linux. Instead, it should replace Red Hat Linux with a more robust enterprise software package that maintained the principles of free (as in freedom) software without actually being free (as in price) to customers. How did a successful company like Red Hat manage to take such a risk and turn it in to such reward?

Bigger Than Facebook! Foreign Sites That Outshine the Web?s U.S. Starsopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Wired Magazine

From Kooora to Kijiji to VKontakte, alternatives to the web's US stars are overshadowing the big guys.
Metro-fied Windows Server 8 Goes Big on Cloudopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 12:41 from Wired Top Stories by Mike Barton

Microsoft dropped a bomb on Wednesday with Windows 8 Consumer Preview, which shakes the ground Windows 2000-holdouts walk on. The bombshell is Metro, and it weaves fresh mobile thinking into the desktop in a big way. But Metro's not just for the consumer anymore. Microsoft is also showing off a Metro-fied early version of Windows Server 8, and our friends at Ars Technica have posted a full hands-on. But don't let the Metro sideshow distract you. The main attraction here is that the cloud features large on Windows Server 8.

The Personal Cloud: The Future's Here, But Unevenly Distributedopen original article

Apple's App Store Reaches 25 Billion Global Downloadsopen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 12:29 from Wired Top Stories by Christina Bonnington

Apple announced Monday that its iOS App Store has reached a milestone 25 billion downloads.
Does Preschool Matter?open original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 08:55 from Wired Top Stories by Jonah Lehrer

Preschool helps prime malleable young minds to develop with relative ease. But why do children in socioeconomically deprived homes get so much more value from such an education? Frontal Cortex blogger Jonah Lehrer shares the surprising results of a new twins study.


Bookrenter's Rafter Peeks Inside the Complex Education Industryopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:25 from Wired Top Stories by Tim Carmody

"The future of education is a platform," CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia told me in an interview. "But whose platform is it? Will there be an iTunes or Facebook that can address 500 universities and one million students?"

TED and Meta TED: On-Scene Musings From the Wonderdomeopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:00 from Wired Top Stories by Steven Levy

Susan Cain is a lawyer and negotiations consultant. She is also an introvert who has noticed that institutions like business and education are stacked against people like her. So for the past seven years, she has been writing Quiet, a book on that subject. It was published earlier this year. She knew that to promote it she would have to undertake something difficult for introverts: lots of public speaking. She braced herself for 'a year of speaking dangerously.' Her dream venue was scariest stage of all: TED, which has become for intellectuals and artists the equivalent of what Johnny Carson's couch once was for comedians.
Are Emotions Prophetic?open original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 17:51 from Wired Top Stories by Jonah Lehrer

What if our emotions know more than we know? Only in the last few years have researchers shown our emotional system might excel at complex decisions, as compared to rational decision-making. Frontal Cortex blogger Jonah Lehrer explains why.

Europe-Only 'Science Cloud' Aims to Solve Mysteriesopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 17:17 from Wired Top Stories by Mike Barton

The who's who of European science labs have joined some biggies in IT to launch a "Science Cloud" to help solve some of the mysteries of the universe. It's a Europe-only cloud now because of fears about spying laws in the U.S. Is the Patriot Act holding back international research?

Does Cloud Meets OS Equal Mobile-Data Crunch?open original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 12:28 from Wired Top Stories by Mike Barton

The ire over throttling mobile data customers seems to be the tip of an anger-berg when it comes to "data hogs." Apple and Microsoft are scheming to tap the cloud in their next desktop operating systems to create a personal cloud panacea with iCloud and SkyDrive syncing up all of their digital pics, video, etc. Sky's the limit with the cloud, right? But not so fast with mobile data.  

 Google's New Privacy Policy: What Has Changed and What You Can Do About Itopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 12:14 from Wired Top Stories by Jon Brodkin - Ars Technica

Today's the day Google's new privacy policy takes effect. It's too late to pull out your data now, but there are still some not-completely-foolproof ways to hide from Google.

'Cloud' Data Center Closes Because Federal Agencies Prefer Earthopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 15:38 from Wired Top Stories by Caleb Garling

Harris Corporation -- an outfit that provides computing infrastructure for government agencies -- is selling its super-secure data center in Harrisonburg, Virginia and leaving the "cloud computing" business, saying that both its government and commercial customers prefer hosting "mission-critical information" on their own premises rather than in the proverbial cloud.  




Here's Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseasopen original article

Mon Mar 5, 2012 15:20 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

For the first time, the government explained why it believes it has the legal authority to kill U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism while they're overseas, without providing them with a process to contest their killings. Only Attorney General Eric Holder's landmark speech on Monday posed more questions than answers.

Torture, Riots, Burnt Korans: One Afghan Jail's Dark Historyopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

It's bad enough that U.S. troops burned Korans in Afghanistan. But they did it at the U.S.' sprawling wartime jail an hour's drive from Kabul. And it's hardly the first time the pressures of keeping hundreds of Afghans under lockdown has come back to hurt the military.

Big Sis Can't Quit the Drug Waropen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 15:49 from Wired Top Stories by Robert Beckhusen

Three years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the war on drugs "had not worked" -- and admitted that the American appetite for narcotics "fuels the drug trade." But now Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would like to that that all back. It's full steam ahead for the drug war.




SUVs of Death: Commandos Want Missiles in Their Trucksopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:00 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

Imagine an SUV pulls off the road and rolls down its passenger-side window. Out blasts a missile, careening as far as 60 miles. This is how the U.S. military's elite Special Operations Command imagines the counterterrorist car chases of the future.

Secret Army Bomb Jammers Stolen in Afghanistanopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 12:14 from Wired Top Stories by David Axe

It's bad enough that two U.S. Army vehicles have been stolen from the military's headquarters in Kabul. But what's really got the Army worried is what was inside the vehicles: two sets of top-secret Duke radio frequency jammers used to block the signals that detonate remote-controlled improvised explosive devices.





New Video Shows Japanese Speech-Jamming Gun in Actionopen original article

Privacy and Civil Liberties in the Digital Ageopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:37 from Wired Top Stories by Sen. Al Franken

Between our wireless phone company, the company that we use for e-mail, our smartphone company and the companies that provide the apps on our phones, there exists a detailed, expansive record of everywhere we've been, every website we've visited and everyone we've called, e-mailed and texted and what we've said ? often going back years and years. I believe that consumers have a fundamental right to know what information is being collected about them. I believe that they have a right to decide whether they want to share that information, and with whom they want to share it and when. And I believe that consumers have a right to expect that companies that store their personal information will store it securely.

Angry Birds, Meet Jailbirds: New App Helps You Snitch on Your Friendsopen original article

Fri Mar 2, 2012 08:30 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

Want to turn in your neighbor to the Department of Homeland Security, with no accountability? Yeah, there's an app for that.

Constitutional Showdown Voided: Feds Decrypt Laptop Without Defendant's Helpopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 15:17 from Wired Top Stories by David Kravets

Darpa Warns: Your iPhone Is a Military Threatopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 13:00 from Wired Top Stories by Noah Shachtman

There's a growing threat to the U.S. military, according to the Pentagon's premier research wing. No, it's not Iran's nukes or China's missiles. It's the iPads, Android phones and other gadgets we all carry around with us every day.

U.S. Wants You to Hunt Fugitives With Twitteropen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 04:30 from Wired Top Stories by Noah Shachtman

A worldwide manhunt kicks off at the end of March -- a search across America and Europe for five fugitives, identifiable only by their mug shots. The successful team of trackers not only gets a $5,000 bounty from the U.S. State Department. They demonstrate to the planet's law enforcement and intelligence agencies that they can hunt down fleeting suspects using nothing but their wits and social media connections.

California Lawmaker Wants Rules for Robo-Carsopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 17:10 from Wired Top Stories by Chuck Squatriglia

California Sen. Alex Padilla welcomes our robotic overlords with legislation directing the CHP to outline regulations for the use of autonomous vehicles on California roads.

 Curb Your Cat's Technological Curiositiesopen original article

Thu Mar 1, 2012 12:17 from Wired Top Stories by wired

This guide will offer a few strategies to keep the cats away from your stereo equipment, hard drives, routers, computers and other sensitive gear.

Video: Navy Fires Off Its New Weaponized Railgunopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 13:46 from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman

It took seven years of research and much congressional skepticism, but the Navy finally has a weaponized prototype of its Electromagnetic Railgun, a hypersonic weapon that can send a bullet across hundreds of miles of ocean in mere minutes. And it's released video of the fiery bursts that emerge from a gun that the Navy wants to use to defend its ships of the future.

New Avengers Trailer Builds Up Supergroup Dramaopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:16 from Wired Top Stories by Angela Watercutter

The hot new trailer for Joss Whedon's The Avengers is a virtual scruff-of-the-neck grabber, showing not only precious seconds of city-crushing war but also the strife within the superhero supergroup as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and S.H.I.E.L.D. bring together its reluctant members.
Secure Your Browser: Add-Ons to Stop Web Trackingopen original article

Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:06 from Wired Top Stories by Scott Gilbertson

The web is following you. Visit one website and behind the scenes dozens of other websites may be told about your visit. Sometimes the data collected is anonymized; sometimes it isn't. Fortunately it's not that hard to make all the tracking stop. Several add-ons, available for most web browsers, can help protect your privacy.

Building Responsive Websites: How to Handle Navigation Menusopen original article

Tue Feb 28, 2012 10:06 from Wired Top Stories by Scott Gilbertson

Web design is going through a transition period as designers move from building fixed-width websites to fluid, responsive designs. Here are some ways your site's navigation can adapt to the multitude of screen sizes on today's web.