Thinkstock Microsoft confirmed this weekend that it has delayed, if not killed entirely, Astoria, a tool designed to make it easy for Android apps to run on Windows 10 phones and tablets, according to Re/Code . Microsoft's stated strategy for the Astoria project was to enrich its app store with some…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday. NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the…

Far into the northernmost regions of our planet, in an Arctic channel between Canada and Greenland, lies a barren island of little more than a square kilometer in size. There’s practically nothing on it, except a weather station. No one lives here, there are no natural resources to speak of and it’s…

The US State Department has signed off on the sale of $1.29 billion worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, including tens of thousands of bombs that will restock a Saudi arms stockpile depleted by the country's air campaign in Yemen, which has been linked to civilian deaths. Human rights groups have…

A French soldier enforcing the Vigipirate plan, France’s national security alert system, patrols in front of the Arc de Triomphe on Nov. 16, 2015 in Paris. Photo by Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Since terrorists struck Paris last Friday night, the debate over whether encryption prevents intelligence…

Chile’s Communist Party Rejects Intervention in Venezuela Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Campaign…

When the late Oliver Sacks reached North America in the 1960s, he reports in his memoir On The Move , he knew he wouldn't be returning to London and his Orthodox Jewish family anytime soon. He sent home a telegram that read simply, STAYING. His mother, rarely expressive, was crestfallen. "When you…

Oliver Sacks on 5 Common Types of Hallucinations

The next generation of children born in Britain "will not know what money is", the boss of Apple has predicted. Your kids will not know what money is Tim Cook, Apple CEO, to university students Tim Cook, the chief executive of technology giant, forecast the death of cash by the time current…

America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the…

Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So it’s of course unsurprising that ever since Edward Snowden’s…

I am back from Amsterdam after presenting our research at Blackhat “ Even the LastPass Will be Stolen, Deal with It! ” together with Alberto Garcia . We had a blast at the conference and we got great feedback from the audience. Many asked for the video, slides, etc. so I though it was worth writing…

When Google open sourced its artificial intelligence engine last week—freely sharing the code with the world at large—Lukas Biewald didn't see it as a triumph of the free software movement. He saw it as a triumph of data. That's how you'd expect him to see it. He's the CEO of the San Francisco…

Getty Images Cardiovascular disease kills more people on Earth than anything else— over 17 million a year , and the number keeps going up. Of those deaths, more than 40 percent is due to coronary heart disease. Medicine has drugs that can treat it and practices that can help prevent it, but nobody…

Tom Belt, a native of Oklahoma, didn’t encounter the English language until he began kindergarten. In his home, conversations took place in Cherokee. Belt grew up riding horses, and after college bounced around the country doing the rodeo circuit. Eventually, he wound up in North Carolina in pursuit…

On July 1, Funai , the Brazilian governmental agency in charge of indigenous Indian affairs, quietly posted a short press release on its website: two days earlier, they said, seven members of an isolated Indian tribe emerged from the Amazon and made peaceful contact with people in a village near the…

When Piero Genovesi received my email, his interest was piqued. Is there anywhere left, I asked, free from invasive species? Genovesi chairs the Invasive Species Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, so he spends much of his time fretting about animal alien…

In 1504, an anonymous mapmaker – most likely an Italian – carved a meticulous depiction of the known world into two halves of conjoined ostrich eggs . The grapefruit-sized globe included recent breaking discoveries of mysterious distant lands, including Japan, Brazil and the Arabic peninsula. But…

Typing robot photo by Shutterstock Automated Insights' technology is already being used by companies like the Associated Press and Yahoo to autogenerate data-heavy articles about quarterly earnings , college sports , and even fantasy football recaps . Today, the company is unveiling a public-facing…

An inexpensive method for generating clean fuel is the modern-day equivalent of the philosopher’s stone. One compelling idea is to use solar energy to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen and then harvest the hydrogen for use as fuel. But splitting water efficiently turns out to be…

Not all Corn Palaces were quite so grand. (Photo: Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer) In 1890, Forest City, Iowa, built a palace–not of stone, or wood, or brick, but of flax. There was, one visitor reported, “flax for siding and flax for shingles, flax for decoration outside and inside, on the…

Following the ISIS outrages in Beirut and Paris, John Pilger updates this prescient essay on the root causes of terrorism and what we can do about it. In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on…

First things first. Linux.Encoder.1 , the "Linux" crypto-ransomware, is not a Linux security hole. This malware relies on a security hole in the Magento web e-commerce platform, not Linux. If you use Magento and haven't patched it since February 9, 2015 -- yes it's been that long -- then, and only…

Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots. CIA Director…

A mock-up of the stationary storage unit that will use old electric car batteries in Germany. Daimler AG When electric vehicle batteries get long in the tooth, they have to be replaced because they’ll start experiencing power loss—which will mean reduced vehicle performance. But what happens to…

An ancient island where the Athenians and the Spartans battled in 406 BC has been discovered by an international group of geo-archaeologists. The scientists, led by researchers from the German Archaeology Institute, examined underground rock layers from an Aegean Sea peninsula near Bademli village…

YouTube/Screenshot Anonymous has declared "war" on ISIS in response to the attacks in Paris that left more than 100 people dead. Members of the online collective have posted a video. It continues the group's work against ISIS, which began strongly after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. In a…

U.S. and Saudi Bombs Target Yemen’s Ancient Heritage

Edward Snowden's embrace of the free flow of information apparently doesn't apply to online ads. In an interview with The Intercept , the government surveillance whistleblower gave some advice on how average citizens can shield their privacy online. One of the less obvious security tips: flip on an…

We all know that moment. You register for a new service, type in your chosen password, but can’t get in. Your password could very well be secure, but the opinionated service you’re trying to use disagrees. You must use at least 1 symbol, 1 number, 1 uppercase letter, and 1 lowercase letter. Forget…

Credit Photograph by Charly Franklin / Getty The steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who was wealthier in his day than Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Warren Buffett combined, amassed his fortune through brash business practices and the labor of thousands who toiled in his mills, but he…

Older browse past shows Show Archive Newer Friday, October 3, 2014 Friday's Show This week we explore what creativity is and how it works. iStock We want to be creative but channeling our creative impulses is no small feat. Is creativity something we are born with or can we learn it? In this hour,…

Even dogs can meditate, why can’t you? http://bamboomoves.blogspot.com/2013/05/from-yogadork-stop-trying-to-meditating.html Buster Benson Oct 22, 2014 Meditation is awesome. It’s pretty much the simplest, cheapest way to improve your life that has ever been invented. The only problem with meditation…

A quarter of the century after the end of the Cold War, the only cannon that has actually fired in space finally comes to light. Installed on the Almaz space station in 1970s, the R-23M Kartech was derived from a powerful aircraft weapon. The original 23-millimeter cannon was designed by Aron…

AP Photo An Islamic State flag in Sadiyah, Iraq, November 2014 The shock produced by the multiple coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday—the scenes of indiscriminate bloodshed and terror on the streets, the outrage against Islamic extremism among the public, French President Francois Holland’s vow…

Getty Images Japan has fallen into a recession four times since the global financial crisis Japan's economy has fallen into recession again after it shrank 0.8% on an annualised basis in the third quarter. The preliminary data means the world's third-largest economy has contracted for a second…

“Mark is fixing stuff.” I’m killing time in the Frank Gehry–designed Building 20, whose signature feature is its soaring 434,000 square feet of open space, the latest addition to Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California . A PR handler is explaining why CEO Mark Zuckerberg is running slightly…

Questions about how the terrorists behind Friday’s attacks in Paris managed to evade electronic surveillance have fueled worrisome speculation in Europe and in the U.S. from intelligence experts, lawmakers and the press — including the New York Times, which on Sunday quietly pulled from its website…

The Paris attacks took place on Friday night. Since then, France’s president has vowed “war” on ISIS and today significantly escalated the country’s bombing campaign in Syria (France has been bombing ISIS in Iraq since last January , and began bombing the group in Syria in September). Already this…

Refugees enter a registration camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border on Nov. 11. (Robert Atanasovski/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) The writer is a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Last week, President Obama said that the Islamic State is “ contained ”…