wired news just after half past three in the morning
Wired: Gadget Lab
  • Bionic Cat Walks on Prosthetic Legs Oscar, a three-year old British cat, has joined the rarefied ranks of bionic animals. After a horrifying accident chopped off his hind legs, Oscar has gotten a second lease on life through two bionic leg implants. Oscar lost his legs to a combine harvester last October. With heavy blood loss and bits of missing flesh, he [...]
  • Motorola Droid X Gets Dissected Motorola’s Droid X is not out in retail stores yet but one phone enthusiast had taken a screwdriver to the device already. Max Lee tore down the Droid X to expose its innards and show what’s inside the smartphone. It took Lee about 10 hours to figure out how to take the back cover off but [...]
  • Plastic Logic Que E-Reader Turns Into Vaporware Remember Que, Plastic Logic’s large screen e-reader that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year? It’s increasingly looking like vaporware. Plastic Logic isn’t shipping the Que e-reader, though the company is officially calling it a “delay.” Plastic Logic has canceled all pre-oders and is no longer offering a date as to when we can [...]
  • Apple’s Response to iPhone 4 Antenna Problem: You’re Holding It Wrong There’s an old joke about a man who visits a doctor, complaining that his arm hurts whenever he moves it a certain way. The doctor’s response? “Stop moving it that way.” That pretty much sums up Apple’s response to the people who have complained that holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand can cause signal [...]
  • Google Flips Remote Kill-Switch on Android Apps In a blog post, Google has described how it remotely removed two safe but “practically useless” applications from Android phones. The two free applications billed themselves as being for “security research” but because they “misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads”, the Android team nuked them from afar using its remote kill-switch, removing [...]
  • Bent Basket: The Fixed-Gear of Cargo-Carrying Is it me, or are bike racks and baskets getting hotter and hotter? The latest example is the made-to-order Bent Basket by San Francisco designer Faris Elmasu. The plywood, nylon and aluminum construction sits over the front wheel where you can gaze upon its lovely curves as you ride. In practical terms, the Bent Basket looks [...]
  • Cute Hug-a-Plug Fits Into Nooks and Crannies The Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter not only doubles the amount of sockets into which you can plug your appliances, it flips the outlets through 90-degrees so you can use them easily, even when hidden awkwardly away behind furniture. It’s also called Hug-A-Plug, which along with its surprised-looking Mario-cloud face, is just plain cute. The adapter [...]
  • New, Vintage Polaroid Cameras Sell Out in Hours When you think of Polaroid, you probably picture the SX-70 OneStep Land Camera above, once the best selling camera in the US. If you had been awake yesterday, you could have bought one. Not any old reproduction, but a factory original, put together from real Polaroid parts by the folks at the Impossible Project, who [...]
  • Kinetic Energy Generator Powers Gadgets with Magic The nPower PEG is exactly the kind of thing that would have airport security asking you some rather awkward questions, and perhaps also earn you some childish snickers. The rather utilitarian phallus is in fact a kinetic energy generator which charges gadgets as it moves. The PEG (personal energy generator) makes electricity as you move, harvesting [...]
  • Guitar Sidekick Puts Smartphones Right Where You Want Them Last night I went to see Bob Dylan in concert. The audience for the rock legend has probably changed more than Bob himself. I saw a lot of Cuban cigars, dads with binoculars and mumsie types waddling what I expect was meant to be a sexy dance. I also saw a lot of cellphone and [...]
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Wired: Gadget Lab
  • Bionic Cat Walks on Prosthetic Legs Oscar, a three-year old British cat, has joined the rarefied ranks of bionic animals. After a horrifying accident chopped off his hind legs, Oscar has gotten a second lease on life through two bionic leg implants. Oscar lost his legs to a combine harvester last October. With heavy blood loss and bits of missing flesh, he [...]
  • Motorola Droid X Gets Dissected Motorola’s Droid X is not out in retail stores yet but one phone enthusiast had taken a screwdriver to the device already. Max Lee tore down the Droid X to expose its innards and show what’s inside the smartphone. It took Lee about 10 hours to figure out how to take the back cover off but [...]
  • Plastic Logic Que E-Reader Turns Into Vaporware Remember Que, Plastic Logic’s large screen e-reader that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year? It’s increasingly looking like vaporware. Plastic Logic isn’t shipping the Que e-reader, though the company is officially calling it a “delay.” Plastic Logic has canceled all pre-oders and is no longer offering a date as to when we can [...]
  • Apple’s Response to iPhone 4 Antenna Problem: You’re Holding It Wrong There’s an old joke about a man who visits a doctor, complaining that his arm hurts whenever he moves it a certain way. The doctor’s response? “Stop moving it that way.” That pretty much sums up Apple’s response to the people who have complained that holding the iPhone 4 in their left hand can cause signal [...]
  • Google Flips Remote Kill-Switch on Android Apps In a blog post, Google has described how it remotely removed two safe but “practically useless” applications from Android phones. The two free applications billed themselves as being for “security research” but because they “misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage user downloads”, the Android team nuked them from afar using its remote kill-switch, removing [...]
  • Bent Basket: The Fixed-Gear of Cargo-Carrying Is it me, or are bike racks and baskets getting hotter and hotter? The latest example is the made-to-order Bent Basket by San Francisco designer Faris Elmasu. The plywood, nylon and aluminum construction sits over the front wheel where you can gaze upon its lovely curves as you ride. In practical terms, the Bent Basket looks [...]
  • Cute Hug-a-Plug Fits Into Nooks and Crannies The Hug-A-Plug Dual Outlet Wall Adapter not only doubles the amount of sockets into which you can plug your appliances, it flips the outlets through 90-degrees so you can use them easily, even when hidden awkwardly away behind furniture. It’s also called Hug-A-Plug, which along with its surprised-looking Mario-cloud face, is just plain cute. The adapter [...]
  • New, Vintage Polaroid Cameras Sell Out in Hours When you think of Polaroid, you probably picture the SX-70 OneStep Land Camera above, once the best selling camera in the US. If you had been awake yesterday, you could have bought one. Not any old reproduction, but a factory original, put together from real Polaroid parts by the folks at the Impossible Project, who [...]
  • Kinetic Energy Generator Powers Gadgets with Magic The nPower PEG is exactly the kind of thing that would have airport security asking you some rather awkward questions, and perhaps also earn you some childish snickers. The rather utilitarian phallus is in fact a kinetic energy generator which charges gadgets as it moves. The PEG (personal energy generator) makes electricity as you move, harvesting [...]
  • Guitar Sidekick Puts Smartphones Right Where You Want Them Last night I went to see Bob Dylan in concert. The audience for the rock legend has probably changed more than Bob himself. I saw a lot of Cuban cigars, dads with binoculars and mumsie types waddling what I expect was meant to be a sexy dance. I also saw a lot of cellphone and [...]
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Wired: Culture
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:40:00 GMT
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Wired: Politics
Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:35:00 GMT
  • ASCAP Assails Free Culture, Digital Rights Groups The association that collects royalties for 380,000 musicians blasts Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, saying those groups oppose copyright.


  • To Reach Afghans, Pentagon Drafts Mimes, Storytellers, Wizard of Oz The Pentagon's ultimate team of technologists is looking to looking to breach the cultural divide in Afghanistan — with storytelling, pantomime, and the Wizard of Oz.


  • Darpa Push: Solar Cells Tough Enough to Handle a War For years, the military has made on-again, off-again attempts to find eco-friendly ways to get power war-zones, bases and drones. And lately, they’ve seemed willing to try almost anything to do it. Now Darpa, usually the agency behind the Pentagon’s most out-there ideas, is putting their money into an old standby: solar power.


  • You Don't Want ISPs to Innovate ISPs are trying to persuade the FCC not to impose basic rules on them, saying it will crush innovation. But when it comes to the tubes to your house, you don't want their kind of "innovation."


  • Accused Hacker Who Balked at 2-Year Prison Deal Faces Decades An accused hacker sends a threatening e-mail to Vice President Joe Biden from his neighbor's computer, rejects a 2-year plea and now looks at spending decades behind bars because of added charges. The Minnesota man is now being indicted on kiddie-porn charges.


  • Twitter Settles With FTC Over 'Happiness' Breach Twitter agrees to implement a new security program and submit to a security audit as part of a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission. The flap is over Twitter breaches that jeopardized customers' privacy in 2009.


  • Does Petraeus Mean a Return of Afghan Air War? When Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war in Iraq, airstrikes went up seven-fold. Will the same happen, now that's he's taking over the Afghanistan war?


  • Judge Rules Copyright Law Protects YouTube in Viacom Lawsuit The Digital Millennium Copyright Act allows Google's YouTube video-sharing service to operate legally, a federal judge rules in Viacom's $1 billion infringement suit.


  • Why Obama Had to Fire McChrystal In the end, it was Obama's only move. Keeping General Stanley McChrystal in place would have undermined any hope of waging a successful counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.


  • McChrystal Aides Shocked, 'Heartbroken' After Mag Profile I’ve spoken with a number of current and former aides to General Stanley McChrystal today. None of them felt like going on-the-record; no surprise there. But their reactions to his incendiary profile in Rolling Stone mostly ranged from shock to dismay to sadness to think-I’m-gonna-puke.


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