We often say, upon the passing of a friend or loved one, that the world is a poorer place for the loss. But with the untimely death of programmer and activist Aaron Swartz, this isn't just a sentiment; it's literally true. Worthy, important causes will surface without a champion equal to their measure. Technological problems will go unsolved, or be solved a little less brilliantly than they might have been. And that's just what we know. The world is robbed of a half-century of all the things we can't even imagine Aaron would have accomplished with the remainder of his life.
A federal judge late Friday blocked enforcement of a California voter-approved measure that would have dramatically curtailed the online, First Amendment rights of registered sex offenders. Proposition 35, which passed with 81 percent of the vote in November, would have required anyone who is a registered sex offender -- including people with misdemeanor offenses such as indecent exposure and whose offenses were not related to activity on the internet -- to turn over to law enforcement a list of all identifiers they use online as well as a list of service providers they use.
This is a near-infrared, colour-coded composite image of a sky field in the southwestern part of the galactic star-forming region Messier 17. In this image, young and heavily obscured stars are recognized by their red colour. Bluer objects are either foreground stars or well-developed massive stars whose intense light ionizes the hydrogen in this region. The diffuse light that is visible nearly everywhere in the photo is due to emission from hydrogen atoms that have (re-)combined from protons and electrons.
Wired Classic: This gallery from March 2011 is an all-time reader favorite. This collection of ingenious spy gadgets includes a raft of devious tricks from the CIA, former Soviet bloc and other countries.
Pinoccio, an Indiegogo-funded microcontroller designed to let you build and link projects to each other and to the web, is DIY Internet of Things in a small, programmable package.
Self-taught sculpture artist Haroshi is using the discarded leftovers of broken skateboards to create striking wooden creations.The 35-year-old Tokyo resident, who prefers to not use his full name, began skating at age 15 in Kanagawa, amassing a growing stack of broken decks and parts. Ten years later, his collection overflowing, a friend suggested he find ...
The gurgles, whistles and squeaks of humpback whales singing off Hawaii's island shores can now be heard live, courtesy of underwater microphones placed near Puako, Hawaii by the Jupiter Research Foundation.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
An online petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration build a Death Star like the one in Star Wars reached 25,000-plus signatures last month, a threshold obliging the government to respond whether it will build the fictional weapon capable of annihilating planets. The White House responded on Friday.OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO "Secure resources and ...
A Texas high school student on Friday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court's order upholding her school suspension for refusing to wear around her neck an RFID-chip student ID she claims is the "Mark of the Beast."The Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-laden student-body cards when ...
Industrial Light and Magic share the five key steps in creating the best CGI Hulk ever.
Stop us if you've heard this before: Western forces have launched a war in a foreign country against terrorists. Only this time, so far, it's the French doing the fighting in Mali.
In the U.S., waiting for high-speed fiber internet to come to your neighborhood is a bit like waiting for a file to download over dial-up. It's gonna take a while. But in China, the government will soon require all new homes constructed where public fiber optic telecom networks are available to be equipped for access to those networks.
Three days before the moon-orbiting Ebb spacecraft collided with a lunar mountain, its on-board cameras captured some striking images of the pockmarked moon's northern hemisphere -- from just six miles up. On Jan. 10, NASA released what look like scenes from a science fiction movie: Two probe's-eye views of the lunar farside, made from Ebb's stitched-together images.
Each week, Wired Design brings you a photo of one of our favorite buildings, showcasing boundary-pushing architecture and design involved in the unique structures that make the world's cityscapes interesting. Check back Fridays for the continuing series, and feel free to make recommendations in the comments, by Twitter, or by e-mail.
A study conducted by Intel, the United Nations and the U.S. State Department finds that in developing countries internet access among women is 23 percent lower than among men.
Flowing, curvaceous gadgets took a back seat to boxier shapes with sharp, straight lines at CES this year, indicating a spreading design trend that experts say largely originates from Apple.
President Barack Obama signed legislation Thursday granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they're watching on Netflix. It's great news for those wanting to flood their Facebook feeds with whatever time-suck they're watching. But it's bad news for privacy. Lawmakers cut from the legislative package language requiring the authorities to get a warrant to read your e-mail or other data stored in the cloud.
The idea for a live-action?Star Wars?show has been in development for years under Star Wars?creator George Lucas, and now that Disney's recent $4 billion acquisition?of the massively popular sci-fi franchise is complete, ABC is?taking a look at the long-awaited series, said the network's entertainment president Paul Lee in an interview with?Entertainment Weekly."We'd love to do ...
Google is now offering a beta channel release for its Chrome for Android web browser. If you want to test new features, or just like getting those features before everyone else, you can grab a copy of the Chrome beta from the Google Play Store today.
Fuji updated the X100 with the X100S. The S stands for speed because this camera is crazy fast. And while the camera's internals got a boost, the X100S still carries the classic body of the X100.
A violent collision millions of years in the past may have stretched out one arm of the spiral galaxy NGC 6872, making it the largest known spiral galaxy and perhaps generating a new galaxy in its wake.
The FAA will be conducting a "comprehensive review of the design and production of the Boeing 787," according to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Concern over Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner has grown this week after a lithium ion battery caught fire on board one of the new airliners in Boston on Jan. 7, one of several issues that have arisen since the airplane entered service more than a year ago.
Google Fiber was supposed to be a shaming exercise. But any shame felt by the country's big-name ISPs hasn't yet to produce the sort of ultra-high-speed internet services we've all been hoping for.
The Pentagon is grounding planes and leaving ships in port -- not because it wants to, but because Congress' budgetary chaos leaves it little choice.
There?s something eerie about a clown-striped fumigation tent on a dark, residential street. It evokes a sense of the uncanny?a mood that photographer Robert Benson went to great lengths to capture in his new photo series.
With its MyEnergi Lifestyle project, Ford wants to extend the concept of off-peak power consumption to home appliances and further reduce an EV owner's electric bill and CO2 footprint.
You don't know if there'll be snow, but the co-founders of San Francisco startup Liftopia say they can get you to go skiing or snowboarding anyway. The secret: sell lift tickets like plane tickets.
Are crows mind readers? Recent studies have suggested that the birds hide food because they think others will steal it -- a complex intuition that has been seen in only a select few creatures. Some critics have suggested that the birds might simply be stressed out, but new research reveals that crows may be gifted after all.
Internet. Things. Add the ?Of? and suddenly these three simple words become a magic meme -- the theme we?ve been hearing all week at CES, the oft-heralded prediction that may have finally arrived in 2013. But ? with great opportunity comes great responsibility. Along with its conveniences, the IoT will unveil unprecedented security challenges.
. The good news is that several websites offer useful—or at least interesting—information regarding the season’s outbreak. is a good place to start. First, it shows the regions in the world where the flu is most rampant, with North America being the hardest hit. You can also download animated flu trends for Google Earth that show a 3D model of the Earth, then you can drill down into various states to see how this year’s flu data compares with previous years. It also provides a link to Public Data Explorer, which lets you click on various countries or regions and compare flu search activity according to which of them are getting the most Google searches for the term “flu.” is also worth checking out if you’re concerned about how many people near you have come down with the bug. You can sign in with Facebook or your email address, give the site your birthdate and zip code, and fill out a short survey to determine whether you’re experiencing any symptoms. In return, you get a Google Map peppered with little pins indicating others who have self-reported whether they have been sick. FluNearYou is also available as an Android and iOS app.
A built-in PDF viewer component based on JavaScript and HTML5 Web technologies has been added to the Mozilla said Friday. The browser maker described the built-in PDF viewer as more secure and safer than proprietary PDF viewing plug-ins, like those installed by Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader. However, several security experts noted that it probably won't be free of vulnerabilities. "For a number of years there have been several plugins for viewing PDFs within Firefox," Mozilla Engineering Manager Bill Walker and Mozilla Software Engineer Brendan Dahl said Friday in a . "Many of these plugins come with proprietary closed source code that could potentially expose users to security vulnerabilities. PDF viewing plugins also come with extra code to do many things that Firefox already does well with no proprietary code, such as drawing images and text." The built-in PDF viewer currently being tested stems from a Mozilla Labs project called PDF.js. "The PDF.js project clearly shows that HTML5 and JavaScript are now powerful enough to create applications that could previously have only been created as native applications," the Mozilla software engineers said. "Not only do most PDFs load and render quickly, they run securely and have an interface that feels at home in the browser."
is a sign of anything, it's that the time has come for Oracle to rewrite the programming language. discovered this week. According to Botezatu, Oracle has lost control of Java's code, which is why serious security vulnerabilities continue to emerge in the software. "Oracle needs to take some core components of Java and write them from scratch," he said in an interview.
If you spend a lot of time at your computer, and I know you do, a wrist-rest is a must. Especially during these winter months, when desks, tabletops, and other work surfaces tend to get chilly. Of course, a properly elevated wrist is also less likely to develop repetitive-stress problems. You can buy a wrist-rest, sure, but why spend money when you can make your own using any number of household objects? For example, I often work standing up at the bar-height section of our kitchen counter. It's made of granite, so it can get really cold.
For techies like ourselves, CES is the Greatest Show on Earth (P.T. Barnum, eat your heart out). So trust us when we tell you these are the things from CES that you don’t want to miss. You’ll thank us later.
Google's recent upgrade of Chrome has sparked a new round of bogus updates of the Web browser from cybercriminals hoping to steal online banking credentials and perform other mayhem. , providing users with higher performing software and patching two-dozen security vulnerabilities. Because Google usually refreshes the browser every six to eight weeks, cybercriminals get a dependable opportunity to lay traps for users. Mimicking the same tricks used in the past, the snares are set on websites designed as if they are from Google, security vendor GFI Software reported on Friday. The sites urge the visitor to "Update Google Chrome: To make sure that you're protected by the latest security updates." People trying to download the file while using Chrome will get a warning that they are trying to install a file that "appears malicious." Those who do not hit the discard button will download malware that has been seen on more than a dozen sites since October.
to make distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks a legalized form of free speech has been created on the whitehouse.gov website. The creator of the petition believes DDoS is "not any form of hacking in any way" and is a legitimate form of protest with the advance of the Internet. "It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any 'occupy' protest," the petition reads. "Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time."
predicts. services for Current, expects to see even more alliances as customer use case requests outpace the ability of individual providers.
Facebook is apparently offering some users the opportunity to shell out $100 to email CEO Mark Zuckerberg and make sure their message lands in his main inbox rather than the box where spam-like messages to non-friends usually end up. Sound enticing? For most people, if you want to email President Barack Obama, basketball star LeBron James or author Vince Flynn you can certainly do so but most likely they’ll never see your message. That’s because if you don’t know someone your missives don’t end up in their main mailbox. To see this for yourself, just go to your messages, click on “See All” and then you can access not only your inbox, but these “other” messages, as well.
LAS VEGAS—Wouldn’t it be handy to have a single wireless charging solution for all of your family’s smartphones? That’s the concept behind the new line of cases and wireless charging bases from BuQu Tech, shown here at CES. At least, that's the idea if your home has the Apple iPhone 4 and 4S, and the Samsung Galaxy S III. BuQu Tech says its first products, supporting those devices, are scheduled to ship in the first quarter; iPhone 5 and Galaxy Note II varietals are coming later this year. Once you clap a Magnetyze case onto your smartphone, you can charge it and synchronize data with your PC by simply resting the phone on a Magnetyze base. As the system's name implies, the holds the phone securely in place with magnets. The base units come in various forms from a desktop stand ($30), car ($50), and wall ($40) chargers, and a pancake-like flat desktop charging disc ($30). Unlike inductive charging systems that support no real electrical connection between the phone’s battery and the charging unit, the Magnetyze system uses a conductive design, which means that electrical contacts on the base must line up with the contacts on the phone case. This is easily done since the magnets in the base stations pull the phones into position.