Steve Jobs Social Media Tributes (Infographic)

The other day we shared an infographic of the global outpouring of grief for the death of Steve Jobs, based on an analysis of Tweets in non-English languages ??? an impressive grid which about the illustrated the reach of Apple’s visionary co-founder. The people at Meltwater, the social media analysis company, have come up with [...]

Tell a Story About a Toy You Love

What do Hot Wheels cars, Star Wars action figures, radio control cars, Rubik’s Cubes, Transformers, and Dungeons & Dragons have in common? Well, aside from the fact that they’ve all shown up on GeekDad in some form or other, they’re all finalists this year for the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong. Of course, [...]

Relive the Early Years With John Booth’s Collect All 21! Memoirs of a Star Wars Geek – The First 30 Years

John Booth, fantastic writer and good friend of mine, takes us back 30 years, sharing his myriad and detailed memories of being an early Star Wars fan in his book, Collect All 21! Memoirs of a Star Wars Geek – The First 30 Years. John has been a Star Wars geek from the very beginning, [...]

Say It Ain’t So, Walt! Disney Announces More 3D-Conversion Travesties (GeekDad Weekly Rewind)

If you paid to see The Lion King 3D at a movie theater, this is your fault. Partly, anyway. Due to the huge box office receipts from the film — about $80 million in the U.S. alone at the time of this writing — Disney has announced four more 3D conversions to hit theaters in [...]

Rise of the Machines: Why We Keep Coming Back to H.G. Wells’ Visions of a Dystopian Future

War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau set the template for today's bleak science fiction, from Alien to The Terminator.

Wordstock Interview: Jonathan Hill

To kick off my round of Wordstock interviews, I spoke to Jonathan Hill, illustrator of Americus. Jonathan is here in Portland, so I was able to stop by and see his studio space. His drafting table and cart with brushes, pens, and supplies took up a large portion of the attic room, with his computer [...]

Geek Girl Con This Weekend! (GeekDad Weekly Rewind)

Seattle-area geeks, especially geek girls, get thee to the first annual Geek Girl Con this weekend, October 8-9, at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms and the EMP Museum. Though it is named Geek Girl Con, everyone is welcome to attend, although children under 16 need to be under adult supervision. For a con in its first [...]

GeekDad Puzzle of the Week Solution: An Hour in a Weekday Evening

In his answer to this week’s puzzle about multitasking through a family evening, Adam pointed out that time flies like an arrow, and that fruit flies like a banana. So true, Adam. So true. Mark wondered how much would it cost just to move, thus avoiding the hassle of cleaning. In fact, just tonight my wife [...]

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Saturday, October 8th

As we’ve reported before, our good friends over at Google are starting up a daily puzzle challenge. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. And much to our enjoyment, they’ve decided to share the puzzles with us at GeekDad (hmm… Google a Day? GD? GeekDad?), [...]

Steve Jobs, Revolutionary: An eBook From Wired

It???s hard to imagine a better subject than the life and times of Steve Jobs???charismatic and difficult, mysterious and inspiring, with a biography that might have been plucked from Greek myth. In the wake of his death Wired presents Steve Jobs: Revolutionary, an eBook featuring our best stories about him.

A Tight Fit – Evolution and the Armadillo’s Shell

Charles Darwin was a poetic naturalist. The final passage of his 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection illustrates this best of all. Who would have thought that all the complex beauty of ???an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with [...]

As Mobile App Downloads Skyrocket, MP3 Rates Level Off

Our appetite for downloading apps is tremendous, and just seems to keep on growing, and yet our need to download other forms of digital entertainment isn’t nearly as staggering. Market intelligence blog Asymco found that the rate we’re downloading iOS apps at these days absolutely dwarfs iTunes music downloads, and crushes iBooks downloads. Only in [...]

Guest Post: A Diplomat’s Guide to Reading WikiLeaks

Reading the WikiLeaks cables requires a trained eye, since all is not what it seems and what's not there is as important as what is. That's according to guest contributor Daniel Serwer, a John Hopkins professor and former diplomat.

DHS Launches ‘Minority Report’ Pre-Crime Detection Program

Could your ethnicity, gender, breathing and heart rate provide clues to criminal intent? The Department of Homeland Security apparently thinks so. The agency is already testing a program on select members of the public to determine if algorithms using these factors could indicate mal-intent, according to an internal document obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center [...]

Gadget Lab Podcast: Wired Remembers Steve Jobs

As many of you know by now, Apple chairman of the board and co-founder Steve Jobs passed away on Wednesday at the age of 56. Instead of bringing you our usual episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, we thought it appropriate to take a moment to reflect on what Apple under Steve meant to us, and how his vision for products shaped the very way we interact with technology today.

Guest Post: Steve Jobs, In And Out of Exile At Apple

In West of Eden, Wired contributor Frank Rose recounts what happened at Apple during three pivotal years in the company???s history. The story begins with Steve Jobs, then 27 and excited about the idea that Apple could sell computers as if they were packaged goods, recruiting Pepsi-Cola president John Sculley to run the company. It [...]

So Long, WiMax: Sprint Confirms LTE Rollout by 2013

Joining the likes of competitors AT&T and Verizon, Sprint will soon begin building its own 4G LTE network, essentially admitting its bet on the rival WiMax standard was a bust. Sprint, the nation's third largest carrier, plans to roll out its 4G LTE network on the 1900MHz spectrum by mid-2012, with complete build-out by the end of 2013.

Lisez-Vous Français? Kindle Takes A Big Global Step

When I saw that French was one of the supported interface languages for the new entry-level Kindle, I knew that a new Kindle store en français would not be far off. Now it’s here, with 35,000 French-language titles for Kindle available now and the 99-Euro Kindle shipping to Amazon.fr customers on October 14. If you read [...]

Construct Music-Playing Cities in Isle of Tune for iPad

We haven't seen anything remotely like Isle of Tune for iPad, which was released Friday, with the exception of the web-based Isle of Tune, which impressed us late last year with its utterly unique approach to songsmithery.

How a Physicist Sees the Universe: Messy and Sublime

Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall thinks about many things. Not just particle physics and cosmology, which are her forte, but also about the process of science, the nature of risk and uncertainty and even the approach that art and religion take to understanding the world. Lisa Randall is the author of Knocking on Heaven???s Door: How Physics [...]

Why Scientific Progress Sometimes Goes Boink

Read an excerpt from physicist Lisa Randall's new book, Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. WHAT???S SO SMALL TO YOU IS SO LARGE TO ME Among the many reasons I chose to pursue physics was the desire to do something that would have a permanent impact. If I was going to invest so much time, energy, and commitment, I wanted it to be for something with a claim to longevity and truth. Like most people, I thought of scientific advances as ideas that stand the test of time.

Is China Banning Growth Promoters And Do They Mean It?

A tantalizing prospect surfaced yesterday. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis tweeted a link to a Sept. 13 story from an online agricultural trade journal that said, in its entirety: China’s Ministry of Agriculture has announced a forthcoming ban on antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed. The ban is supported by the [...]

Publisher Claims Ownership of Time-Zone Data

An astrology publishing house is claiming ownership of historical time data, and is demanding researchers stop distributing the work in a bold federal copyright infringement lawsuit.

How Super Mario’s Latest Adventure Plays With 3-D

Part of the initial appeal of a new Mario game is pressing buttons and watching what happens. In Super Mario 3D Land, the most magical button is the 3-D slider.

Flying Monsters’ Pterosaurs Soar With Avatar-Style 3-D

The new British documentary offers a fascinating look at pterosaurs, a class of prehistoric airborne reptiles that look like they flew straight out of Avatar's cinematic menagerie.

Guest Column: Steve Jobs, Obsession, and Those Whales

I interviewed Steve Jobs multiple times while a writer at Fortune magazine, but by far the most insightful ??? and most memorable ??? was the most informal.??Maybe that???s because it turned out to be the last time in February of 2008. Or maybe it was because of the whales. ‘I love my family,’ Jobs told me. [...]

Private Space Companies Gather Momentum

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the X-Prize winning flight of SpaceShipOne. Brian Binnie’s 24-minute flight to more than 367,000 feet captured the world’s imagination and put a spotlight on the opportunity of private space flight. In the years since there have been some delays, but training for flights has already started, even though [...]

Exclusive: Computer Virus Hits U.S. Drone Fleet

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones. The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions [...]

Mozilla Plans to Silently Update Future Firefox Releases

Borrowing another trick from Google's Chrome browser, Firefox will soon move its update process to the background, where it won't bother users.

Forensic DNA Could Make Criminal Justice Less Fair

Forensic DNA databases are a potentially powerful law enforcement tool -- but critics say they may biotechnologically magnify the criminal justice system's flaws.

Wildlife Trusts Could Be New Tool for Saving Wolves

Legislators from Montana and Idaho are trying to legally order the Fish and Wildlife Service to delist wolves in those states without the possibility of judicial review. You can probably predict how these states will choose to manage their wolf populations.

Zelda: Skyward Sword Intro Tells a Story In Pictures

Like in Wind Waker and Minish Cap before it, the introduction to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an image montage. The game’s opening video (embedded above) tells a water-colored story of good, evil and ultimate power. You know, the usual. It’s a nice little morsel for ravenous Zelda fans as we eagerly wait for [...]

Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Women in Technology (GeekDad Wayback Machine)

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate women and girls in technology. It is in honor of Ada Lovelace, obviously, who is often credited with writing the first computer program. Ada Lovelace was often ill as a child, but she kept up her education during her illnesses. She learned mathematics and science from private [...]

Army Throws ‘Iron Fiesta,’ Followed by Budget Hangover

Starting Monday, the U.S. Army and thousands of its closest friends will descend on Washington D.C. for the ground service’s annual convention. Only this year, there’s going to be a pall cast over the whiz-bang displays of futuristic weapons, tanks, drones, and spy gear that the defense industry wants to sell the Army. That’s because [...]

Twitter Analysis: Massive Global Mourning for Steve Jobs (Infographic)

In the hours after Steve Jobs' passing, researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute tried to track the spread of memorial tweets spreading through the internet. Their computers were overwhelmed.

White House Issues ‘WikiLeaks’ Order to Secure Classified Data

More than a year after thousands of classified and sensitive U.S. government documents were leaked to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks, the White House issued an executive order designed to improve the security of classified networks and prevent further leaks.

Cyclemeter, Runmeter Fitness Apps Make Clever Use of iOS5 Notifications

It didn’t take long for a clever developer to hack the new iOS5 notification system. Abvio, maker of a clutch of fitness apps, has done some clever things with notifications that will let you leave you iPhone well alone whilst working out, but still be kept up to date. Abvio’s Runmeter, Cyclemeter and Walkmeter apps have [...]

GhostGuitar, Awesome Augmented Air Guitar for iPhone

GhostGuitar is an app that will revolutionize the air guitar industry. No longer do you have to imagine the awesome sounds that you’re pumping out of your imaginary axe. Instead, you can use your talented hands to pump out actual power chords. As the promo blurb says, “Finally. A real air guitar.” The app uses the [...]

Heroes of Neverwinter Brings D&D; to Facebook

You and your Facebook buddies can now venture into dank dungeons and frightful forests, seeking out treasure, glory, experience points. The typical RPG haul.

Lori Dorn, The TSA, and the Five Stages of Grief

I don’t fly very often–in fact, I think that I’ve been on three flights in the past 10 years. The last flight was a family trip to Orlando out of JFK in New York–and I can still recall how humorless our airport experience was. “This doesn’t feel like the start of a family vacation,” I muttered [...]

Paizo unveils their new Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box

Paizo has previewed the contents of the highly anticipated starter set for their Pathfinder RPG in this 10-minute long YouTube video, and it’s very impressive: You can read more about the Beginners Box set on the Paizo blog. Also check out Michael Harrison’s information about Paizo Publishing and WizKid Games’s collaboration on a line of pre-painted, [...]

Dork Tower Friday

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.

Electric Bamboo Scooter Perfect For The Morning Bakery Run

While electric bikes may or not be better than their people-powered counterparts, the push-along scooter seems like a perfect candidate for some extra electric oomph. What’s more, the lesser stresses of a scooter’s simple design looks like a better fit for bamboo, too. So the T20 bamboo scooter from France’s Antoine Fritsch seems ideal. Scooting is [...]

10 Things Parents Should Know About Real Steel

The new Hugh Jackman movie has some heartwarming father/son moments. But mostly we want to see robots beating each other up.

Bookie Woogie: Kids Reviewing Kids’ Books

I love reading children’s books ??? I think I never outgrew them ??? and I love sharing great books with you here on GeekDad. When I’m able to, I try to tell you my daughters’ reactions to them as well, to give you an idea of what a kid might think of them. That doesn’t [...]

Listen: Hemingway’s Short, Moving Nobel Prize Speech

After this year's Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Tomas Transtromer, blogger David Dobbs received an audio clip that seized his heart: a 1954 recording of Ernest Hemingway reading his acceptance speech.

Friday Field Photo #157: Evidence of a 500 Million Year Old Storm

This week’s Friday Field Photo is from a quick jaunt I took yesterday to scout out some outcrops for the class I’m teaching this term. If you know me or anything about this blog you know that I don’t spend a lot of time discussing carbonate sedimentary rocks. This is not because they aren’t interesting, [...]

Making Sense of Digital Books for Kids – Part 1

The world of children’s digital books is quickly becoming as densely populated as the rest of the app world, if not more so. And why shouldn’t it? People who love to tell and publish stories to children will obviously go to where children are consuming their media to tell them stories. Increasingly, one of those [...]

This Week in The Clone Wars: “Mercy Mission”

As you can tell from the peaceable look of the clone troopers pictured above, this week’s episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars involves a mercy mission to the planet Aleen, which is being plagued by quakes. The 104th Battalion, led by Commander Wolffe and accompanied by C-3PO and R2-D2, fly in with supplies. [...]

Tonight: Michael J. Fox and Michael Douglas Join Phineas and Ferb’s Halloween Episode!

Watching a new episode of??Phineas and Ferb is, of course, always a great time. But when they do a Halloween-themed episode, it’s even better, and the new one tonight is even more fun than the ones from previous years. Not only is it substantially weirder than usual, but they also snagged some pretty impressive guest [...]

Remove Ads From ‘Special Offers’ Kindle for $30

So you bought a Kindle with “Special Offers.” Maybe you were a little light on cash. Maybe you thought the ads wouldn’t bother you. Maybe you figured the prospect of saving $30-$40 and never having to see that awful Emily Dickinson screensaver ever again was too good to be true. Whatever. I won’t judge. But [...]

Middle-Earth Is Pro-Recycling

???I wish the bottle had never come to me?????? ???A plastic type-1 bottle to rule them all. It must be destroyed. Go to Mount Dump and dispose of it?????? ???Trash-riders!” Yes, another spoof trailer, but this one’s a hoot — and has impressive production values for a mere comedy sketch. The folks at Megasteakman have once again grasped [...]

Busy Parents, Rejoice: Control Your Garage Door From Your Phone

One of Steve Jobs’s lasting impacts on our society is the maxim that, for whatever task or challenge we face, there’s an app for that. Now, we can add garage door openers to that list. Craftsman now has two new garage door openers that use their AssureLink gateway to allow homeowners to either monitor or [...]

Look: Giant Spy Blimp Dwarfs an 18-Wheeler

That teeny-weeny, toy-looking thing to the left? An 18-wheeler truck. The giant egg to the right? The biggest spy drone anyone has ever made. The optionally manned airship — known by the cumbersome code name of “Blue Devil Block 2” — was first inflated with air in early September. Last week, at a hangar in Elizabeth [...]

9 Imaginary Twilight Zone Films That Could Make You Forget Real Steel

Rod Serling's influential sci-fi series unspooled many mind-bending stories a half-century ago. These standout episodes would make excellent movies fit for 21st-century reboots.

Photo Gallery: Occupy Wall Street Ignites Political Hackathon

Critics dismiss #OccupyWallStreet as a bunch of dirty, whining hippies and trustafarians. But many of the protesters at Zucotti Plaza are actually hacker-minded geeks bringing an engineering mentality to bear on politics and several high and low-tech problems.

Oct. 7, 1959: Luna 3’s Images From the Dark Side

Soviet space probe Luna 3 takes the first photographs of the far side of the moon. They aren't transmitted back to Earth until 11 days later.

Fake Stick-On Magnets Better Than Real Magnets

The horseshoe magnet is a curious object. Instantly recognized by just about anyone with eyes, and yet almost never actually seen in real life. It’s a little like the pictograms for landline phones with dials we still see used to represent, well, phones. Which brings us to Your Magnet, an accessory by Lufdesign which looks — [...]

Alt Text: Shedding Light on Dark Energy’s Mysteries

If you follow science news, you've heard a lot about something called "dark energy," and you're probably feeling lost and confused. What is it? Is it important? Could it affect Superman, who is normally only vulnerable to Kryptonite or magic? Let me explain.

Skylanders Character Details Start Materializing

With the competition hotting up for the Skylanders competition, a fellow blogger has been putting in some investigative time into how the different Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure minifigs will perform once you take them into the game. If you’ve not got your head around how Skylanders works my studio tour video should help. If you are up [...]

IR Jammer: TV-B-Gone-B-Gone

The most famous TV-B-Gone prank must surely be the one executed by Gizmodo at 2008’s CES. When MAKE magazine gave a bunch of gadget bloggers a widget that would cycle through IR codes and quickly shut off any TV in the vicinity, it must have known what would happen. The result: much bluster and moral [...]

Gallery: Artists Pay Tribute to Steve Jobs

Creative types use the very tools the Apple co-founder devoted his life to inventing to create their own tributes to technology's great innovator.

Solve Different: A Puzzling Tribute to Steve Jobs

In the last 24 hours, the internet has been bombarded with tributes to the late Apple Inc. titan Steve Jobs. The puzzle world, enable in its work by Jobs's creations, was no exception. Here is puzzlemaker Andrew Marc Greene's "Think Different" puzzle, posted on Facebook this morning.

Congress Grills FBI Chief About Anti-Islam Training

At a congressional hearing on Thursday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the Bureau was through with training sessions that equated “mainstream” Muslims with terrorists — and besides, briefings like those were mere “isolated incidents.” But Mueller’s description of the extent of the training doesn’t square with a large body of evidence that Danger Room [...]

Judge Refuses to Sanction CIA for Destroying Torture Tapes

A federal judge won’t hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videotapes of detainee interrogations that included the use of a torture technique known as waterboarding, ruling instead Wednesday that the spy agency merely committed “transgressions” for its failure to abide by his court order. Punishing the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein [...]

Guest Column: Steve Jobs as Frank Lloyd Wright

In 1983, my little software company was lucky to be invited to work on Apple’s new computer in development, the Macintosh. Back then Apple wasn’t as secretive as it is today. Everyone knew something was coming. We knew what it was called, but no one was saying what it was. I gladly signed the agreement, [...]

Google Maps Fuels Scavenger Hunt for Noah Wall’s New Album, Hèloïse

Electronic musician Noah Wall wanted to do something creative to commemorate the release of his new album, Hèloïse. His novel solution: Hide copies of the record around New York City and kick off a Google Maps-fueled scavenger hunt.

Altered States: A Preview of Intercoastal Altercations 5

After an eight-year hiatus, Intercoastal Altercations, America's longest-running and most anagrammatically-titled online puzzle hunt, opens a new chapter starting tomorrow.

Guest Column: Steve Jobs, For The Love of Technology

Why has the death of Steve Jobs caused such a huge outpouring of grief? Mainly, I think, because Jobs had an ability to make very human connections with people. He could do it in a commencement speech which barely mentions technology — but his greatest achievement was to do it with technology itself. In [...]

The DIY-Drone of the Future Is … a Flying Pogo Stick

Darpa is holding a contest to design the military's next spy mini-drone. So far the entrants include a flying pogo stick, a sail that lands on mosques, and an unmanned laser shooter.

Director Calls In Time ‘Bastard Child of Gattaca’

The filmmaker who created Gattaca sees a direct link between his 1997 sci-fi cult classic and his upcoming gene-themed mind-melter, In Time. “I think of it as the bastard child of Gattaca because at the time I thought the holy grail of genetic engineering, of course, is to find the aging gene and switch it off,” [...]

Remembering Steve Jobs Across the Web

People of all types came out to celebrate, mourn and honor Steve Jobs after learning of his death yesterday. Some converged on local Apple Stores or flocked to Apple's Cupertino campus, while others paid their respects online.

What 300 Sea Otters Can Tell Us About the Ocean

Scientists from the U.S. Geological survey have been capturing and studying sea otters as part of a new project to study the nearshore environment in the Pacific Northwest. The blood and whiskers of otters and ear bones of fish provide a new view of this difficult-to-understand environment and may help researchers understand why sea otter populations have been declining.

The Contortionist Combat of Max Payne 3

In another life, ex-cop Max Payne might have been an acrobat. A depressed, alcoholic, trigger-happy acrobat with a gift for gratuitous violence.

Volcanoes Seen From Space and the Eruption Update for October 6, 2011

From Guatemala to Mediterranean, volcanologist and blogger Erik Klemetti provides an update on seven notable volcanic regions from around the world.

Army Shows Off Soldier Smartphone Beta

It wasn't one of those epic Steve Jobs product roll-outs. Not even close. But in an obscure warren of the Pentagon, the Army took a major step towards embracing the smartphone revolution that Jobs did so much to promote.

World’s Oldest Car On The Auction Block

There are antique cars and then there is the 1884 De Dion Bouton Et Trepardoux Dos-A-Dos Steam Runabout. At 127 years of age, the company auctioning the vehicle claims it to be the “oldest running motor car in the world.” The steam powered car can hit 38 miles per hour and is expected to fetch [...]

Guest Post: Sir Richard Branson on Steve Jobs

So many people drew courage from Steve and related to his life story: adoptees, college drop-outs, struggling entrepreneurs, ousted business leaders figuring out how to make a difference in the world, and people fighting debilitating illness. We have all been there in some way and can see a bit of ourselves in his personal and professional successes and struggles.

‘This Stuff Doesn’t Change the World’: Disability and Steve Jobs’ Legacy

When I heard that Steve Jobs had passed away, I was boarding a train from New York to Philadelphia to visit my son. A friend phoned and then text-messaged me the news before I could read it on Twitter. It felt, I said later, as if someone had torn the hair out of my head.

Jobs

It’s impossible to imagine the web as it is today without Steve Jobs in the story. Even something as seemingly simple as proportional width fonts might not exist were it not for Jobs and Apple, to say nothing of the WebKit project and dozens of other contributions. Through it all Jobs and Apple always managed to [...]

Guest Post: Sir James Dyson’s ‘Apple Moment’

The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is. Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that???s completely inaccessible. You read about all the amazing things it can do but when you try to use it you???re just frustrated.

Gadgets the Pentagon Made — From the Microwave to the New iPhone

Listen to the Light App Is a Musical Exploration of New York’s Central Park

Bluebrain, the musicians behind The National Mall, have put together another location-aware album. This one works in New York City's popular Central Park.

Oct. 6, 1956: Sabin Polio Vaccine Ready to Test

1956: Dr. Albert Sabin announces that his live-virus oral polio vaccine is ready for mass testing. It will soon supplant the Salk vaccine.

“It’s Just a F**king Little 16th Note. But You Have to Play It.”

The fine writer Steve Silberman has posted a collective homage to good teachers at his blog NeuroTribes. The loveliest is his tribute to his husband Keith, who holds a PhD from Berkeley and teaches science in a high school. Lucky be his students. Steve asked several writers to answer the question, What’s the most important lesson [...]

Insightful Video Breaks Down The Matrix’s Inspirations

The Matrix took its influences from a host of movies that came before it. In just a little over six minutes, this video breaks down many of the films that came before the Wachowskis' sci-fi classic.

Vinyl Gets Sliced, Reassembled in Analog Sampling Technique

Designer Ishac Bertran has developed an analog music-sampling technique by physically cutting and pasting pieces of vinyl together to create new tracks.

Biofuels, Speculation Blamed for Global Food Market Weirdness

A new analysis of rapid, volatile rises in global food prices puts the blame on biofuel policy and mortgage meltdown-style speculation, which may have fundamentally changed how food markets function.

Stop-Motion Ninja Fight Slays With Awesomeness

Ninja brings together the ninja action of Kill Bill with the stop-motion animation stylings of Fantastic Mr. Fox for one truly impressive video short.

Monkeys Control Virtual Limbs With Their Minds

Although real-life brain-controlled prosthetics that enable a person to, say, pick up a pencil continue to improve for amputees, limbs that can actually feel touch sensations have remained a challenge. Now, by implanting electrodes into both the motor and the sensory areas of the brain, researchers have created a virtual prosthetic hand that monkeys control using only their minds, and that enables them to feel virtual textures.

How the M00p Malware Gang Was Brought Down

How a years-long investigation by law enforcement agents and an anti-virus firm brought down the M00p malware gang.

Review: Arty American Horror Story Spikes Fright Formula With Kinky Sex

The bloody new soap opera respects its genre roots, hitting viewers with a full complement of creaky doors, squeaking stairs and whistling wind. But it freshens up the scare tactics with three-dimensional characters that have a lot more than ghosts to worry about as they settle into a mansion brimming with bad vibes.

Software Makers Win Big in Supreme Court Copyright Fight

The Supreme Court is refusing to review a federal appellate panel’s decision that software makers may use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares. Without comment, the justices on Monday let stand a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that is another erosion of the so-called “first-sale” doctrine, which [...]

Video: The Navy’s New Robo-Copter Heads to Afghanistan

Afghanistan's a dangerous place to drive a convoy and a really dangerous place to send a helicopter crew. That's why the Navy's shipping two robotic choppers to the warzone, ready to haul up to 6,000 pounds of cargo a day. This video shows the new K-MAX drone at work.

Nobel Awarded to Researcher Who Redefined Crystalline

The Nobel Prize in chemistry has gone to a lone researcher who illuminated something even more basic than the universe's structure: His discovery of what's now termed a quasicrystal actually redefined what a crystalline solid is.

Xfinity, FiOS and More TV Headed to Xbox 360 This Year

Comcast Xfinity, Verizon FiOS, HBO and many more television services are on their way to Xbox 360 this holiday season, Microsoft said on Wednesday.

Tame Your CSS With ‘SMACSS’

Woolly, the CSS sheep. CSS is notoriously difficult to organize. The complexity of CSS selectors coupled with ever-changing project requirements and redesigns can quickly turn even the simplest of stylesheets into a snarled, tangled mess of code. Ugly code can be perfectly functional code (if it couldn’t the entire web would have collapsed in on itself [...]

Kratos, Sackboy Collide in PlayStation TV Campaign

Ever wanted to see Uncharted’s Nathan Drake chat up Final Fantasy XIII protagonist Lightning? Sony’s newest TV advertisement, released on Wednesday, lets you watch all your favorite PlayStation all-stars interact. The commercial, which features CG versions of classic PlayStation characters from God of War’s always-angry anti-hero Kratos to the cute and cuddly Sackboy of LittleBigPlanet, is [...]

Can Better Bathroom Design Combat Infections?

Are wash room door handles, hot-air blowers and bathroom design increasing our chances of infection? Superbug's Maryn McKenna takes a look at the research on the germiest hazards in public places, and a little on better design.

How to Model Newton’s Cradle

You know about Newton’s Cradle. Either you have seen it as an office desk toy, or as a physics demo. It goes: click, click, click, click. So let me show you how it works. What better way to show this than to make a model of it. Oh, maybe you guessed it. [...]