Anastasia Pantsios May. 21, 2015 10:55AM EST It was more than five years ago when the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, spewing an unknown amount of oil. The April 2010 accident was the worst oil spill to ever occur in U.S. waters and it had far-reaching impacts on…

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Memorial Day got off to a bad start. In 1868, barely four years after the end of the Civil War, Gen. John Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued an order setting aside May 30 as a day for “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the…

Tonight, the US Senate failed to move ahead with the USA Freedom Act, an NSA reform bill that would address phone record surveillance and FISA Court transparency and fairness. It also was unable to muster votes for a temporary reauthorization of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the section of law…

Last week’s settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling weakness of modern antitrust. The banks had engaged in the biggestprice-fixing conspiracy in modern history. Their self-described “cartel” used an exclusive electronic chat room and coded language to…

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The National Security Agency will be unable to collect US phone records in bulk by the time Congress returns from its Memorial Day vacation.Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP The National Security Agency will be legally unable to collect US phone records in bulk by the time Congress returns from its…

Yes supporters gather in Dublin Castle square as the referendum on same-sex marriage appears to have been approved by Irish voters.Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images 2.59pm EDT 14:59 Ireland becomes first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote - summary Irish voters have…

The fight over the labeling of genetically engineered food is heating up on Capitol Hill, as safety advocates mount a campaign to beat back industry-backed legislation that would leave the nation without a mandatory labeling standard. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) introduced the Safe and Accurate Food…

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard speaks at Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona. Stephen Shankland/CNET Mozilla has revamped its Firefox OS mobile software project after concluding that ultra-affordable $25 handsets aren't enough to take on the biggest powers of the smartphone world, CNET has learned. The…

At an 18th-century mansion in England’s countryside last week, current and former spy chiefs from seven countries faced off with representatives from tech giants Apple and Google to discuss government surveillance in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks. The three-day conference, which took place…

Color perception is an ancient and active philosophical problem. It’s an instance of the wider category of sensory perception, but since the color spectrum fits on a single line (unlike, say, touch and taste), it has always been of particular interest. In her new book Outside Color , University of…

Against technophobia The rise of the PC or "micro-computer," as it was sometimes called in the 1970s, dramatically changed the marketing landscape. Suddenly foldouts featured images hitherto unknown to computer advertising: families and recreational settings. Mom, dad, and the kids were all over ads…

I've always been a tinkerer. It comes from my dad. Growing up, we lived in a house in Pasadena that had no driveway. You used an alley that ran through the middle of the block, behind all the houses, to get to your backyard or the garage. Well, the neighbor behind us had a U-Haul trailer up on car…

A Colombian trade union leader is beginning an unprecedented claim for damages against BP in the high court in London, alleging the oil company’s complicity in his kidnap and torture 13 years ago. Gilberto Torres, 52, was abducted in February 2002 while driving home from an oil-pumping station in…

This activist demanded millions of surveillance videos from the Seattle police. They handed him the data — and a job. Mark Harris May 22, 2015 Unlisted On September 22, 2014, an anonymous activist nearly brought down the Seattle Police Department. By typing a few lines on his keyboard, the hacker…

Something is amiss The page you were looking has moved or is no longer here, sorry about that. Our techno monkeys suggest using the search function from the navbar to see if you can find what you were looking for. If all else fails you can also go back to the Home Page and check out some of the…

Back in March, a developer named Renan Cakirerk wrote a small piece of code that made a big impact on Netflix. Cheekily named "god mode," it addressed one of the most annoying aspects of trying to use Netflix in your browser: scrolling through the company's ever-growing list of movies. Once enabled,…

May 25, 2015: Updated with Hacker's List reaction In February, an Alabama woman named Terri went on a hacker-for-hire website called Hacker's List, and posted a job she needed done. "I need to get information off an iPhone6, mainly texts (current and deleted if possible and the call log)," she…

Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. (NASA/MSFC) For as long as we've existed, humans have looked up at the stars — and wondered. What is up there? Who is out there? Now, to that list of questions we can add: And CAN I HAVE IT? The United…

Russia’s media watchdog has written to Google Inc. , Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said they risk being blocked if they don’t comply. Roskomnadzor said it had sent letters this week to the three U.S.-based Internet firms asking…

Special Operators Are Using Rapid DNA Readers By Patrick Tucker Technology Editor May 20, 2015 Topics Intelligence Special Operations Technology Print An unidentified U.S. soldier conducts an iris scan on an Iraqi man during an Iraqi army recruiting drive in the city of Ramadi on Monday March 27,…

In March 2011, the Tara, a 36-meter schooner, sailed from Chile to Easter Island — a three-week leg of a five-year global scientific expedition. All but one of the seven scientists aboard the ship spent much of their time on the sun-drenched deck hauling up wondrous creatures such as luminous blue…

The lavish villa sat overlooking the Bay of Naples, offering bright ocean views to the well-heeled Romans who came from across the empire to study. The estate's library was stocked with texts by prominent thinkers of the day, in particular a wealth of volumes by the philosopher Philodemus , an…

Share How a group of college students made gaming history at the dawn of personal computing and computer networks. It started as an experiment. Steve Colley had just figured out how to rotate a cube on the screen when Howard Palmer suggested they could make a three-dimensional maze. The year was…

Anonymity’s toughest adversaries are hackers with the full-force and backing of Beijing, London, and Washington, D.C. With the threat of powerful intelligence agencies, like the NSA , looming large, researchers have built a new Tor client called Astoria designed specifically to make eavesdropping…

Previous Next Retired This product is no longer available for sale. The seller may be offering an improved version or it may be hanging out on the beach, enjoying the retired life. Wishlist On Wishlist Generates a stream of True Random Numbers for use in Simulations, Security, and Gaming Description…

Alan Rusbridger , Ewen MacAskill and Janine Gibson , theguardian.com Fri 22 May 2015 11.45 EDT First published on Fri 22 May 2015 11.45 EDT

What if we prescribed video games, and not Ritalin, to treat ADHD? One in five high school boys is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Here’s how gaming may change that. Greg Toppo May 11, 2015 By Greg Toppo The following is an excerpt from The Game Believes in You , which…

Gino Celli inspects wheat nearing harvest on his farm near Stockton, California.Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP California’s drought has produced a plot twist too singular even for Chinatown: farmers volunteering to give up a quarter of their water. Scores of farmers in the delta of the Sacramento…

Now we’re ready for some close-ups ... Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones.Photograph: c.HBO/Everett/REX If, like me, you haven’t had the chance to catch up with John Gwynne’s ongoing four-book series The Faithful and the Fallen , then you might have greeted the news he’s landed a “six-figure deal” for…

A Mexican soldier stands guard in Villa Purificación, Jalisco state, Mexico, during the ‘Jalisco operation’.Photograph: Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images A fierce three-hour confrontation between federal forces and drug cartel gunmen hauled up inside a ranch in western Mexico killed at least 42…

Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Edgar Allan Poe; portrait by Gabriel Harrison, 1896 Edgar Allan Poe was and is a turbulence, an anomaly among the major American writers of his period, an anomaly to this day. He both amazed and antagonized his contemporaries, who could not dismiss him from the…

Ball bearings are in your car, your bike, your skateboard, all sorts of machines with moving parts. These genius little devices have been around for centuries, using the magic of physics to reduce friction. In that time, their design has remained mostly unchanged. But a clever new design could make…

Chief EU negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero (R) and chief US negotiator Dan Mullaney hold a press conference in Washington, DC after a new round of talks on creating a transatlantic free trade zone, 19 May.Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals…

Bernie Sanders can’t win: Why the press loves to hate underdogs

Edward Snowden has hailed landmark shifts in Congress and the US courts on NSA surveillance but cautioned that much more needs to be done to restore the balance in favour of privacy. He also warned this was only the beginning of reform of the NSA, saying there are still many bulk collection…