Verizon users might want to start looking for another provider. In an effort to better serve advertisers , Verizon Wireless has been silently modifying its users' web traffic on its network to inject a cookie-like tracker. This tracker, included in an HTTP header called X-UIDH, is sent to every…

20th Century Fox Cillian Murphy as Robert Capa in Sunshine Christopher Nolan's Interstellar , which is now in theaters in grande size and IMAX, left me feeling at turns awestruck, annoyed, impressed, amused, and ultimately a little empty inside , much like the vastness of space. But more than…

The flutelike songs of the male hermit thrush ( Catharus guttatus ) are some of the most beautiful in the animal kingdom. Now, researchers have found that these melodies employ the same mathematical principles that underlie many Western and non-Western musical scales—the first time this has been…

Nancy Hatch Dupree with science students outside the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University: ‘The young have found their voices,’ she says. Photograph: Joel van Houdt for the Guardian F ew people now move to Afghanistan to start a new life. Visitors once came for tourism or trade, but these days…

Stephen Lurie Nov 5, 2014 What the weirdest, wildest, most successful participatory project in history tells us about working together. By Stephen Lurie Illustration by Pablo Delcan Wikimedia, the “ movement ” that includes Wikipedia and all the other Wiki-things, shouldn’t really exist. Its basic…

Aerial view of Cattenom nuclear power plant in Lorraine, one of the French plants targeted by drones operated by unknown persons.Photograph: Alamy Three people have been arrested with drones near a nuclear power plant in the Cher region south of Paris, as sources told the Guardian that the true…

Hindsight can be cruel. In 1932, amid a global economic slump, the impoverished Saudis came to London looking for a loan. They also had an offer: would Britain like to try drilling for oil? A disdainful Foreign Office mandarin gave the fateful reply, writes Matthew Teller - no loan, and no drilling.…

The Virgin Galactic rocket plane had just broken the sound barrier and was shooting toward the heavens when it began disintegrating, battered by powerful aerodynamic forces. The pilots were strapped into their seats as entire pieces were torn from SpaceShipTwo. At more than 10 miles high, with…

The news: In a symbolic gesture marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Palestinian youth have broken through the separation wall cutting them off from Israel. On Saturday the activists sledgehammered their way through from the West Bank village of Bir Nabala into Israeli…

In exchange for political support, Brooklyn politicians give Hasidim latitude to police themselves. They have their own emergency medical corps, a security patrol, and a rabbinic court system, which often handles criminal allegations. Credit Photograph by Christopher Anderson / Magnum Sam Kellner’s…

The author and his family. (Photo by Christine Butler) I knew the day would come, but I didn’t know how it would happen, where I would be, or how I would respond. It is the moment that every black parent fears: the day their child is called a nigger. My wife and I, both African Americans, constitute…

But are these vets getting taken for a ride? Shortly after his 17th birthday, Ali Malik asked his mother for permission to join the U.S. military. A New York City high school student, Malik had watched the twin towers implode from the top story of school, and wanted to show those behind the 9/11…

James Randi in front of a painting done by his partner, the artist José Alvarez. Credit Jeff Minton for The New York Times A few minutes before 8 o’clock one Sunday evening last July, around 600 people crowded into the main conference hall of the South Point casino in Las Vegas. After taking their…

Gov.uk has spent three years building its Verify system, which checks multiple forms of ID to verify a user with other services and companiesPhotograph: Web A new “verified identity” scheme for gov.uk is making it simpler to apply for a new driving licence, passport or to file a tax return online,…

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer Emmanuelle Marchadour Thomas Piketty in his office at the Paris School of Economics, 2013 Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may…

A Texas man has been arrested on wire fraud and securities fraud charges for his operation of what authorities allege was a Bitcoin -related Ponzi scheme that raised millions of dollars through a purported online digital hedge fund. Trendon Shavers, known in Bitcoin forums as "Pirateat40," was…

I n 2011 America’s astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, was on Real Time with Bill Maher discussing the proposed termination of NASA’s James Webb Telescope, which the House Appropriations Committee had decried as “billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.” Tyson went on to…

A few years ago, Greg Jorgensen started supplementing his pay as a full-time programmer with some freelance jobs. Over time, he built up a network of clients by getting referrals from programmers, web site design firms and recruiters. After he got a five-year contract from one web-based firm,…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of squatters from East and West set out to build their own unified Germany. And, despite endless parties, questionable hygiene, and neo-Nazi turf wars, they pulled it off. Kati Krause Nov 7, 2014 By Kati Krause and Ole Schulz Portraits by Ana Lessing…

Apple is known for its incredibly tough contract terms, but the chance to work with the Cupertino-based tech giant hasn’t deterred thousands of companies around the world from trying to win its business. That was part of the thinking behind how GT Advanced Technologies, a little-known New Hampshire…

AP Uber CEO Travis Kalanick acknowledged he tried to torpedo funding efforts of his biggest rival, Lyft. In a profile of Kalanick for Vanity Fair, Kara Swisher reports the following : "We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money," says Kalanick. "And we are going [to their investors], 'Just…

Opinion Prehistory’s Brilliant Future Credit Luke Ramsey ONE morning last spring, I opened my email to see a photograph of the paleontologist Diego Pol. There he was, stretched out, feigning sleep, on a dinosaur’s femur roughly the size of a living room couch. A charismatic Argentine scientist who…

The Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989, 25 years ago this weekend. East Germans flooded into West Berlin after border guard Harald Jaeger ignored orders and opened the gate for the huge, unruly crowd. Alain Nogues/Sygma/Corbis To many Germans, Harald Jaeger is the man who opened the Berlin Wall. It's…

It is 4.18am. In the fireplace, where logs burned, there are now orange lumps that will soon be ash. Orion the Hunter is above the hill. Taurus, a sparkling V, is directly overhead, pointing to the Seven Sisters. Sirius, one of Orion’s heel dogs, is pumping red-blue-violet, like a galactic disco…

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Released on January 29, 1964, the film caused a good deal of controversy. Its plot suggested that a mentally deranged American…

Students are often keen to exercise their rights but recently there has been an interesting twist - some in India are talking about their right to cheat in university exams. "It is our democratic right!" a thin, addled-looking man named Pratap Singh once said to me as he stood, chai in hand, outside…

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Nov. 3, 2014, 3:15 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 3, 2014, 3:25 PM GMT MOSCOW - A memorial to Apple Inc founder Steve Jobs has been dismantled in the Russian city of St Petersburg…

Elmo Keep Nov 9, 2014 200,000 brave and/or insane people have supposedly signed up for a one-way mission to Mars. But the truth about Mars One, the company behind the effort, is much weirder (and far more worrying) than anyone has previously reported. By Elmo Keep Illustrations by Josh Cochran…

If the debate over credit card fees isn’t the main reason some of the nation’s largest retailers are banning Apple Pay from their stores in favor of a competitor app called CurrentC, someone should tell Walmart exec Mike Cook. Execs from the consortium of retailers called MCX insisted recently that…

In recent weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to enact measures to protect the Internet of Russia. In a speech to the Russian National Security Council he said , “we need to greatly improve the security of domestic communications networks and information resources.” Perhaps he…

The Media Equation At the Web Summit in Dublin, Bono said U2 feared a short-lived run for its latest album after years of producing it. Credit Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit DUBLIN — It took nearly 30 years for “The Joshua Tree,” the 1987 album that was U2’s breakout ticket to…

Boris Yeltsin and a handful of Soviet companions made an unscheduled 20-minute visit to a Randall's Supermarket after touring the Johnson Space Center.

A history of American wealth inequality 1 of 11 E. Saez & G. Zucman A NEW paper by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics suggests that, in America at least, inequality in wealth is approaching record levels. The authors examine…

Chinese government hackers are suspected of breaching the computer networks of the United States Postal Service, compromising the data of more than 800,000 employees — including the postmaster general’s. The intrusion was discovered in mid-September, said officials, who declined to comment on who…

Note: A conference call for media with FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez will occur as follows: Date: October 28, 2014 Time: 2:00 p.m. ET Call-in lines, which are for media only, will open 15 minutes prior to the start of the call. Chairwoman Ramirez and FTC staff will be available to take questions from…