NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Clive Thompson - Sep. 23 (Special Report) - ... the real-time Web behaves in the opposite fashion. It's all about "trending topics"—zOMG a plane crash!—which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can't spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.

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12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Warning: The people's ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble.

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FCC Position May Spell the End of Unlimited Internet

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Dylan F. Tweney - Sep. 21 (News Analysis) - FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s unsurprising affirmation of support for network neutrality is a victory for the high-minded principle of open, unfettered internet access. Too bad it means the days of all-you-can-eat, flat-rate internet access are probably over.

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Diebold Quietly Patches Security Flaw in Vote Counting Software

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Aug. 12 (News) - Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold, has patched a serious security weakness in its election tabulation software used in the majority of states, according to a lab that tested the new version and a federal commission that certified it.

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10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By David Wolman - Jul. 30 (Review) - 1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around. 2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this "pseudopenis," which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit. 3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom?s torso and into her pouch for a nipple. 4 Giraffe birth canal. Mama giraffes stand up while giving birth, so baby?s entry into the world is a 5-foot drop. Wheeee! Crack. 5 Goliath bird-eating spider exoskeleton. This giant spider can climb trees to hunt very mobile ...

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Shield Law Overturns Warrant for Student Photographer

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Brendan Seibel - Jul. 23 (News Report) - A San Francisco Superior Court recognizes journalistic entitlements of a student photojournalist who invoked shield law. The decision strengthens support for freelance photographers and journalists who want to protect their sources and notes.

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40 Years After Apollo 11, NASA Maps Out the Future

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Jul. 20 (Special Report) - Forty years ago, NASA put a man on the moon. What does the next 40 years hold for the world's premiere space agency?

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Iran: Ballots Exceeded Voters by Millions

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Jun. 23 (News Report) - Officials found that a total of 3 million more ballots were cast in these cities than there were eligible voters, according to the New York Times. Nonetheless, the council insists that the election results are valid and says the 3 million discrepancy would not affect the results of the election.

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The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kevin Kelly - Jun. 17 (News Analysis) - The frantic global rush to connect everyone to everyone, all the time, is quietly giving rise to a revised version of socialism. Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.

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Crunching Iranian Election Numbers For Evidence of Fraud

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Jun. 16 (News Analysis) - The speed with which the results were certified and the wide margin of victory, coupled with some statistical anomalies, have led many to believe the vote was rigged. Experts say the results are suspicious but not conclusive.

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Pentagon, Pakistan No Longer Cooperating in Drone War?

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Noah Shachtman - May. 15 (Opinion) - This much we know: The U.S. military flew some of its drones over Pakistan, and shared the footage with their counterparts in the Pakistani armed forces. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate as much today. After that, things get… kind of confusing.

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CIA: Our Drones are Killing Terrorists. Promise.

Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Noah Shachtman - May. 12 (News Analysis) - Al Qaeda is so spooked by CIA drone attacks that Osama’s crew is staging spectacular bombings in Pakistan, in an attempt to get America to call off its unmanned attack fleet, former U.S. officials and counterterrror advisers say. And the CIA is apparently so spooked about the possibility of a withdrawal that they’re spilling details about their supposedly-secret drone strikes to the New York Times.

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Obama’s 100 Days: High Marks for Science, Low for Privacy

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By David Kravets - Apr. 30 (News Analysis) - As President Barack Obama marks his 100th day in office today, we’ve set out to grade the 44th president’s performance on the bread-and-butter issues near and dear to Wired.com: copyright, cyber security, science, net neutrality, transparency and privacy. Obama scored high marks in some, but in others he may have to go to summer school.

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Hurricane-Killing, Space-Based Power Plant

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Apr. 20 (News Report) - Not that any kind of space-based solar power system is likely to be charging up the grid any time soon either. Despite the PG&E agreement, Solaren's team has yet to raise the billions of dollars necessary to get their project into orbit. And that could be tough, given the dubious profitability of the technology, particularly in comparison to ground-based green tech. Energy analyst Chris Nelder calls the technology a "pure fantasy."

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The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Oscar Swartz - Apr. 18 (News Report) - Four men connected to The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in prison.

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Company Caught in Texas Data Center Raid Loses Suit Against FBI

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Apr. 09 (News Report) - A company whose servers were seized in a recent FBI raid on Texas data centers applied for a temporary restraining order to force the bureau to return its servers, but was denied by a U.S. district court last week.

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AP to Aggregators: We Will Sue You

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By John C Abell - Apr. 07 (News Report) - The Associated Press board voted Monday to "pursue legal and legislative actions" against aggregators who use content without permission, a new shot across the bow of internet news sites in the war over how little use is "fair use."

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Reporting From the Front Lines of the Texas Evolution Debate

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Juli Berwald - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Just hours before the Texas State Board of Education held its final hearings on the science education standards that would be put in place for the next decade, I set my kitchen timer for three minutes. I practiced my testimony among open jars of peanut butter and jelly strewn about from making kids' lunches. Ding. I still had my conclusion to read. What could I cut? For months I had been slinking around the controversy in Texas. I had gone to every public hearing, sitting on the floor in the back of the packed room. Behind rows of folding chairs, I had gotten to know the voices, if not the faces, of the board members. At issue was the wording of a science standard that states students must be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Since Kansas passed similar legislation in 2005 and Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2006, scientists have viewed these three words as a means for inserting the creationist theology that goes under the name "intelligent design" into science classes.

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Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Brandon Keim - Mar. 31 (News Report) - Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.

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Bad News: Scientists Make Cheap Gas From Coal

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Mar. 28 (News Report) - Electric cars have been getting a lot of buzz lately, but a more immediately viable transportation fuel of the future could be liquid derived from coal. Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. The advance makes scaling up the environmentally unfriendly fuel more economical than greener alternatives.

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Hey, Private Sector, Wanna Buy a Bridge?

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Dave Demerjian - Mar. 24 (Special Report) - The real cost of modernizing the country's infrastructure, says the American Society of Civil Engineers, exceeds $2.2 trillion — an overwhelming figure. Cities and states increasingly are inviting private firms to manage assets these governments can no longer afford and build projects they can't finance. More than half of the states are considering public-private partnerships to get things done, following an example set by European countries that have turned over airports, highways, waterworks and other critical infrastructure to the corporate sector.

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Think Negawatts, Not Megawatts

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Spencer Reiss - Mar. 24 (Comment) - Problem It's high noon in July. At 90-plus degrees outside, the masses are jonesing for AC. But it's seriously expensive to keep the juice flowing when demand crests. Firing up turbines that sit idle 360 days a year can multiply electricity costs by a factor of 10. How to keep cool without stressing the grid?

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Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Brendan I. Koerner - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - Now consider what we will ask the grid to handle in the near future: Demand for electricity is expected to increase by as much as 40 percent in the next two decades—more than twice the population growth rate. To meet that need, we will have to generate an additional 214 gigawatts, a feat that would require the construction of more than 357 large coal plants. We also want to plug in dozens, if not hundreds, of gigawatts of wind and solar power harvested from the most remote corners of the country. And we will want to recharge millions of electric vehicles every night, without fail.

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Officials Hoard Valuable Databases Funded by Taxpayers

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Mar. 20 (Special Report) - Government agencies across the country are sitting on gigabytes of valuable digital data that could be mashed, mixed and re-organized in crafty ways by Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and public interest groups engaged in everything from government oversight, to providing practical information to Americans. Yet, despite federal and state public records laws designed to make the data accessible, many agencies are fighting more ferociously than ever to keep data created with public funds out of public hands. In their battles to withhold information, bureaucrats are citing everything from copyright and trade secret privileges to privacy and national security concerns. And when they do provide data, some agencies charge exorbitant prices for it, ensuring it's only available to those with deep pockets.

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MRI Lie Detection to Get First Day in Court

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Alexis Madrigal - Mar. 17 (Special Report) - Defense attorneys are for the first time submitting a controversial next-generation lie-detection test as evidence in U.S. court.

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