Wired: What We Don't Know How did life begin? What's the universe made of? Why do we sleep? Is the universe actually made of information? How does the brain produce consciousness? Why do we still have big questions? 42 of the biggest unanswered questions in science.
posted by loquacious
on Jan 26, 2007 -
45 comments
Arguing Against Datamining MySpace in search of Pedophiles. In certain circles,
MySpace
has become the villain de jour for all sorts of debauchery
(
threatening
the President,
phishing
,
dismembered
women , etc.), as well as being fertile hunting grounds for the
pedophile. Given the
huge
size of MySpace, reported as 100 million accounts (although
estimates
of active accounts are far lower, at approximately 43 million ), and an
hypothetical and absurdly low natural incidence of pedophiles and pedarasts
(let's say just 1%), one could assume that there could be as many as 430,000
to 1,000,000 of them out there. Wired
contributor and reformed hacker (Kevin Poulson) has developed a script to weed
out the bad seeds
[
via].
His script was effective, although it took several months of sifting and
refining, as well as numerous false positives - 744 registered sex offenders,
497 with convictions for crimes against children. While such an
experiment has merit, how much time, resources, and law enforcement manpower
will be wasted chasing down the
""high-cost
"false positives", and what will be neglected and sacrificed for that
effort?
posted by rzklkng
on Oct 16, 2006 -
38 comments
Wired News has obtained a copy of a file detailing AT&T's involvement with the NSA that was sealed in the EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T. At 2AM EST this morning they have
published that file on their site for anyone to download
(this is the fixed link, the one on Wired is currently broken).
[via]
posted by Ryvar
on May 22, 2006 -
67 comments
Don't Even Think About Lying fMRI is poised to transform the security industry, the judicial system, and our fundamental notions of privacy. I'm in a lab at Columbia University, where scientists are using the technology to analyze the cognitive differences between truth and lies. By mapping the neural circuits behind deception, researchers are turning fMRI into a new kind of lie detector that's more probing and accurate than the polygraph, the standard lie-detection tool employed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies for nearly a century.
posted by robbyrobs
on Jan 5, 2006 -
62 comments
Breaking News: Pop-up ads suck. Wired has a little op-ed piece about the netizens' extreme dislike of pop-up and pop-under ads. Using such choice quotes as, "A study conducted last year by Dynamic Logic found that almost 80 percent of those surveyed had a 'very negative' opinion of pop-up ads," the author goes on to chastise mainstream sites that still make use of them. Of course, his advice would be taken a great deal more seriously if his column didn't sport a massive pop-up ad for
Blockbuster Online.
posted by LondonYank
on Mar 3, 2005 -
30 comments
As illustrated by this recent
Wired Magazine article, consumer-to-consumer recommendations on the Internet are certainly influencing consumer demand.
Goodblock attempts to gather casual friend-to-friend recommendations--from a good baby-friendly Thai restaurant in town to a doggy day care you trust--and collect them in a directory much as
del.icio.us collects bookmark recommendations for your friends to peruse. For now, goodblock is in beta and is accessible only by friend invitation and, similar to the
friendster model, you can only see your own directory and those of your listed friends.
posted by lowkey
on Dec 4, 2004 -
20 comments
Followup:
Wired runs an article called "Fark Sells Out, France Surrenders". Drew Curtis writes a
response (note the sycophantic totalfarkers and more annoyed normal-farkers) -- but, as the article says, "when pressed on the issue, Curtis
refused to deny that Fark accepts payment for placement of links". Was this really a case of one sales rep getting "a little overenthusiastic"? Is Drew ever actually going to deny selling Fark out, or will he just keep writing non-responses detailing his plans for selling it out even more in the future?
posted by reklaw
on Aug 6, 2004 -
43 comments
Policing Virtual Reality. Wired reports on
Sociolotron(NSFW). A MMORPG that allows gamers to rob, rape, and kill other players. Being a gamer, I understand that actions in an MMORPG aren't "real" but how far can you take it?
"Lord Foucault is an admitted rapist. He does it on impulse -- for the thrill of it and for the feeling of control he has over his female victims."
Is this any different than running around and killing dwarves?
posted by jopreacher
on Jun 29, 2004 -
50 comments
Super cool squirrels! "We believe that a ground squirrel, when it goes into hibernation, produces chemical messengers that are released from the brain that direct the slowing down of the metabolism... If we were able to synthesize the same chemical compounds and make them available in an injection, it could be administered to induce a hibernation-like state in humans."
And they're
cute, too.
posted by moonbird
on Dec 11, 2003 -
5 comments
One of my joys of going on vacation is to get off the interstate and
collect a bit of an old historic road. In California over the weekend
we managed to grab a bit of Hwy. 1 aka the Pacific Coast Highway past
nature preserves, resorts and neighborhoods. Another goal is to do all of
U.S. 50, the initial stages of which were reportedly surveyed by George Washington during his tour in the British Army.
Wired has a
nice
article about how a journalist and a photographer ignored the advice
of a Federal Highway Administration spokesperson to take a trip down
Route 1 from Maine to Florida.
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Oct 27, 2003 -
9 comments
Won't somebody think of the children? Wired News reports that a
Mexican
company has launched a service
to implant RFID
verichips
(Technology That Cares)
into children as an anti-kidnapping device.
"The company envisions placing walk-through scanners -- similar
to metal-detector portals used in airports --
in malls, bus stations and other areas where a missing child may appear."
Similar plans have been
proposed
before by the UK's Kevin
"Captain Cyborg" Warwick, but while his plans to use the mobile phone
network are implausible, this method seems more feasible. So, why not
sign up to
get
chipped today!
posted by TheophileEscargot
on Oct 10, 2003 -
14 comments
Mass-produced diamonds Two startups are threatening the De Beers diamond monopoly. They plan to use the money they make from their mass-produced diamonds to "reshape the computing industry". Interesting stuff.
posted by pizzasub
on Aug 13, 2003 -
52 comments
"Then we realized that somehow an insane god had taken control of our world and was out to kill us all." Subscribers of the multiplayer online game "Shadowbane" were in for a shock Tuesday evening when they realized the game system had been hacked, and the rules fundamentally altered, and not in a good way (unless you happen to like mayhem). While this ended up being a "no harm, no foul" scenario, as everything was eventually set right, it was breaking new ground in terms of the uses of hacking. In a world where characters in these games are sold via EBay, and nearly half a million people subscribe to Everquest, how long before legitimate (non "fun and games") version of what just happened occurs?
posted by jonson
on Jun 1, 2003 -
17 comments
The Bacteria Whisperer “Bonnie Bassler discovered a secret about microbes that the science world has missed for centuries. The bugs are talking to each other. And plotting against us.”
posted by o2b
on Mar 21, 2003 -
13 comments
The return of the Movietone? "We fell on this idea of recreating films that looked like and were the length of the old Movietone forms of the 1940s," said Marine Lt. Col. Jim Kuhn, military producer for the undertaking called the Movietone Newsreel Project. Kuhn says the objective is to put together a short film that combines the commentary of real-life soldiers with the kind of footage civilian journalists would be unable to get. (more inside)
posted by damn yankee
on Mar 13, 2003 -
6 comments
In this exposé a Wired News reporter easily gains access to some sensitive areas of the
Los Alamos National Lab, and brings back pictures to prove it. While certainly an embarrassment for a place throwing
workshops on homeland security (and doubly so because their seminars started today), is it wise for Wired News to post essentially a how-to guide on breaking into the lab where America's nuclear secrets reside?
posted by mathowie
on Feb 25, 2003 -
17 comments
Treetop Bloggers Protest Logging A group of anti-logging activists are now ready to maintain
their own blog 130 feet up in an ancient redwood. I've considered
tree sitting, but find myself much more inclined to do so if I could continue working (or reading MeFi, as the case may be). Interesting intersection of technology and activism. Doncha think? (via
/.)
posted by maniactown
on Dec 13, 2002 -
6 comments
Joyce Slaton takes the blame (or some of it) for over-hyped dot com boom reporting (
maybe she read this thread). Journalists flog themselves and their inexperienced peers: "There were a lot of lifestyle editors that ended up on the business desk because that's where the pages were being added," says John Battelle, co-founder of Wired and founder and publisher of The Industry Standard."
Will we ever again be so gullible?
posted by akmonday
on Sep 19, 2002 -
4 comments
