Wired Top Stories
Top Stories

• Decipher Specs When Buying a Computer
  6 Feb 2012 at 6:55pm
  It's not hard to get tangled in technical jargon when buying a new PC, especially if it's your first. This guide was made to help you identify what you want without having to drag your token nerd friend along.

  
  

  
  
• Employee or Employer: Who Owns the Twitter Followers?
  6 Feb 2012 at 6:36pm
  A blogger may be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in economic damages after allegedly hijacking his former employer's Twitter followers. A lawsuit brought by South Carolina-based PhoneDog Media, a mobile-phone review site, raises a novel legal issue asking the simple question: Who owns an account's Twitter followers, the employee or employer? For the moment, it looks like the employer does.

  
  

  
  
• Torrent Search Engine BTJunkie Voluntarily Shuts Down
  6 Feb 2012 at 5:09pm
  

  
  

  
  
• Audio: 165-Million-Year-Old Cricket Song Comes Back to Life
  6 Feb 2012 at 3:00pm
  A song last heard 165 million years ago has been played again, making it the world's oldest known piece of music.

  
  

  
  
• Defendant Ordered to Decrypt Laptop May Have Forgotten Password
  6 Feb 2012 at 2:55pm
  A Colorado woman ordered to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors may use the files against her in a criminal case might have forgotten the password, the defendant?s attorney said Monday.

  
  

  
  
• How NASA Makes Those Incredible High-Res Images of Earth
  6 Feb 2012 at 2:46pm
  In recent weeks, a pair of high-resolution images of the Earth has captivated the Internet. Taken by the Suomi NPP satellite, these pictures portray our planet's incredible beauty with a whopping 8,000 by 8,000 pixel and 11,500 by 11,500 pixel detail.

  
  

  
  
• What An Autopsy Looks Like — and Why You Need One
  6 Feb 2012 at 2:21pm
  Autopsies are crucial for doctor training, progress in medical research and closure for families -- and yet the events are on the decline. Neuron Culture blogger David Dobbs revisits an autopsy he once attended to showcase the value of these ultimate medical audits.

  
  

  
  
• Netscape Founder Battles Cisco With Stealth Startup
  6 Feb 2012 at 2:14pm
  Software-defined networking. Network Virtualization Platform. Oh no, new acronyms to remember, right? But this one is much bigger than that: The cloud is now coming after the high-end networking gear that links up most data centers.

  
  

  
  
• Gunning for Netflix: Redbox and Verizon to Launch Video Service This Year
  6 Feb 2012 at 1:47pm
  This morning, Verizon and Coinstar announced a long-rumored joint venture, combing a new video download and streaming service from Verizon with Coinstar's popular Redbox kiosk rentals of DVDs, Blu-rays and video games. The service will launch in the second half of 2012.

  
  

  
  
• Giants' Win Draws 12,233 Tweets per Second
  6 Feb 2012 at 1:29pm
  The biggest highlights of Super Bowl XLVI ? the thrilling final seconds and Madonna?s halftime performance ? lit up social media, setting a record for the most tweets per second (TPS) on Twitter for any sporting event.

  
  

  
  
• The Army Wants You ... to Be a Virtual Lab Rat
  6 Feb 2012 at 1:00pm
  In the Army's latest call for research proposals, the service is looking for ways to develop a "Virtual Laboratory of Aggregate Behavior," or VLAB. Put simply, the program would yield a digital domain wherein hundreds or thousands of civilians could assemble and partake in "randomized controlled trial experiments" of the Army's design.

  
  

  
  
• The Probabilities of Pennies
  6 Feb 2012 at 12:10pm
  To complete a full set of pennies released since 1959, how many pennies do you need to collect? Mathematician Samuel Arbesman explains how anyone can pull off the feat for less than $7.

  
  

  
  
• Russian Drill Penetrates 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake
  6 Feb 2012 at 12:00pm
  After 20 years of drilling, a team of Russian researchers has breached the prehistoric Lake Vostok, which has been trapped deep beneath Antarctica for the last 14 million years.

  
  

  
  
• A Rose by Any Other Name Might Smell as Sweet, But it Would Probably Be Larger
  6 Feb 2012 at 10:31am
  The JS1K contest seeks the web's smallest, most impressive JavaScript experiments. This year's love-themed entries include a remarkable 3D rose rendered with less than 1k of code.

  
  

  
  
• Rdio's Android Player Gets a Much-Needed Update
  6 Feb 2012 at 9:21am
  The subscription-based streaming music service has just released a completely redesigned Android app that fixes all of the little annoyances.