Listen to David Bowie's First Album in 10 Years for Free Online (Legally)

You don’t have to wait until March 12 to find out whether David Bowie’s first album in a decade is more Tin Machine than Low; the long-awaited The Next Day is already available, streaming in full on iTunes for a limited period pre-release.The stream continues Bowie’s current interest in previewing content from the album for free online before release; videos for both...

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Feds Say Man Deserved Arrest Because Jacket Said 'Occupy Everything'

A Florida man deserved to be arrested inside the Supreme Court building last year for wearing a jacket painted with “Occupy Everything,” and is lucky he was only apprehended on unlawful entry charges, the Department of Justice says.The President Barack Obama administration made that assertion in a legal filing in response to a lawsuit brought by Fitzgerald Scott, who is seeking $1 million...

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Resurrecting the Rainbow Colors of Insect Fossils

After squeezing and baking beetle wings, or soaking them in mud to let them decay, scientists think they’re closer to being able to reconstruct the original brilliant hues of some fossilized insects.Some insects keep their colors after they become fossils, in some cases for millions of years. But others turn varying shades of brown and black. Scientists interested in the evolution of...

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The Friendster Autopsy: How a Social Network Dies

What kills a social network? A group of internet archeologists have picked over the digital bones of Friendster — the pioneering social networking site that drowned in Facebook’s wake — and we now have a clearer picture of its epic collapse.Friendster was once the hottest thing in social networking. Google wanted to buy it for $30 million back in 2003, but — burdened by technical glitches...

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Nissan Promises Electric Race Car for LeMans

Nissan is returning to the world’s greatest road race in 2014 — in an electric vehicle.During the opening ceremony of Nissan’s motorsports headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, President and CEO Carlos Ghosn announced plans to return to the 24 Hours of LeMans next year, when the automaker will occupy the highly desirable “Garage 56″ slot that houses the world’s most innovative...

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Your Next Computer Will Live on Your Arm

Forget about robots rising up against humans for world domination. In the future we’re all going to be robot-human hybrids with the help of wearable computers. We’ve already seen Google Glass, the search giant’s augmented-reality glasses, and now the latest Y Combinator startup to come out of stealth, Thalmic Labs, is giving us a wrist cuff that will one day control computers, smartphones,...

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Wired Space Photo of the Day: Glowing Gas in Omega Nebula

This image is a colour composite of the Omega Nebula (M 17) made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 4.7 x 3.7 degrees. Image: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin. [high-resolution]Caption: ...

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That Syncing Feeling

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired...

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Engine Crack Grounds Pentagon's Entire Fleet of F-35 Stealth Fighters

The U.S. military’s entire fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters has been grounded, owing to a crack in the engine of one jet. This is at least the fourth full or partial stand-down of the F-35, the Pentagon’s main future fighter, in just the last two and a half years.“On Feb. 19, 2013, a routine engine inspection revealed a crack on a low pressure turbine blade of an F135 engine installed in...

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Sony Circles the Wagons With PlayStation 4

The first words out of Sony Entertainment’s CEO Andrew House said it all: “The stakes are high.” His words to the Hammerstein Ballroom last night – packed with journalists, stacked with deep-bass speakers and lit by a dense lattice of lasers – were, if anything, an understatement. Once-mighty Sony is struggling. The franchise most vital to its revival is PlayStation. The history of...

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Darpa Wants to Help You Survive a Nuclear Disaster

If you’re near a nuclear disaster — either a detonated bomb or a malfunctioning reactor — you are probably going to die, and die unpleasantly. Unless the Pentagon’s mad scientists have anything to say about it. Darpa doesn’t have a program in place for creating, say, a super-therapy or spray-on tan that stops nuclear radiation. But 2011′s Fukushima Daiichi reactor catastrophe in Japan got...

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Somersaulting Mini Makes an Epic Backflip

The Mini Cooper is a fun car that can do many, many things — including insane backflips in the snow. Just the thing for testing that suspension. And the heated seats.Rally driver and former freestyle skiing champion Guerlain Chicherit went end-over-end off the ramp in a John Cooper Works Mini. The car, so highly modified as to be barely called a John Cooper Works Mini,...

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New Whale Species Unearthed in California Highway Dig

By Carolyn Gramling, ScienceNOWChalk yet another fossil find up to roadcut science. Thanks to a highway-widening project in California’s Laguna Canyon, scientists have identified several new species of early toothed baleen whales. Paleontologist Meredith Rivin of the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center in Fullerton, California, presented the finds Feb. 17 at the annual...

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<cite>Halo</cite> Creator Unveils Its Next Masterpiece, a Persistent Online World

"Citadel": Concept art from Bungie's Destiny.BELLEVUE, Washington — Destiny, the new game from the creator of Halo, isn’t just another shooter. It’s a persistent online multiplayer adventure, designed on a galactic scale, that wants to become your new life.“It isn’t a game,” went the oft-heard tagline at a preview event on Wednesday. “It’s a world where the most important stories are told...

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The Quirky World of Competitive Snow Carving Comes to California

Team Truckee entered the competition late, after Team Russia was unable to get visas in time. Their sculpture: "Rising Tide."The weekend at Northstar ski resort in Truckee, California, is beautiful, sunny, and in the 30s. For eight teams of snow carvers from around the world, though, it’s terrible — the melty snow is sloppy, hard to carve, and even dangerous.Teams of three from Finland, Japan,...

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Why Almost Everyone in Russia Has a Dash Cam

How is it possible that a dozen different motorists around the Russian city of Chelyabinsk were able to capture video of a massive meteor flying through the sky? Because almost everyone in Russia has a dash-mounted video camera in their car.The sheer size of the country, combined with lax — and often corrupt — law enforcement, and a legal system that rarely favors first-hand accounts of traffic...

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Animals' Love Lives Look a Lot Like Ours

For most of the 20th century, animals weren’t allowed to have emotions. Your dog didn’t actually love you—it (and it was an “it” back then) was just a stimulus–response machine conditioned to act a specific way in a specific situation. Scientists who said otherwise—that animals actually had minds capable of thoughts and emotions—were accused of “anthropomorphizing” and ridiculed by their peers. Even...

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Defense Nerds Strike Back: A Symposium on the Battle of Hoth

So. You guys have really, really strong opinions about the Battle of Hoth. Many took issue with my argument that Hoth represented a military debacle for the Galactic Empire. Some questioned the (meta)factual premises of my case (are TIE Fighters even capable of in-atmospheric flight?). Others argued that Vader was deliberately trying to lose, rendering my essay myopic. Still others desired...

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Tim Cook on Innovation, Retail and Whether We'll See a Cheap iPhone

Tim Cook has never been more bullish about Apple’s ability to innovate, and he sees the company continuing to produce great products that deliver a killer user experience, thanks to Apple’s ability to meld hardware, software, and services into a single package. And on those days when things aren’t going so well, he just takes a trip to the Apple Store, an experience he likened to taking Prozac.Cook...

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Video Exclusive: Makers Help Cartoonist Keep His Kickstarter Promise to Explode

In a moment of Kickstarted exuberance, cartoonist Ryan North made a promise to explode. Makers Derek Quenneville and Lauren Archer made the explosion happen.The uncut version of the video goes like this: We’re in an alley. A man in black places a blue plastic head on the ground among the snow before putting on safety goggles. “Safety third!” someone shouts. A woman in a hoodie runs up to the...

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