Evernote Hack Exposes User Data, Forces Extensive Password Resets

Evernote joins Twitter, Apple, and Facebook on the list of tech companies hacked in recent weeks.Evernote “has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service,” according to a statement posted on the company’s website earlier today. “As a precaution to protect your data, we...

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Best Sci-Fi Effects of All Time, as Voted by You

Sometimes it's the little things that send the mind soaring. Take the pen that floats, weightless, before being plucked from the air by a space stewardess in 2001: A Space Odyssey: It's a simple scene, but it feels real and sends the imagination into hyperdrive. Still, when Wired.com asked its readers to name their favorite sci-fi visual effects of all time, we got...

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What Ousted Groupon CEO's <cite>Battletoads</cite> Reference Meant

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason is many things, and one of them is clearly a Nintendo kid from the 1980s. After his firing Thursday from the daily-deals company that he co-founded, he sent a jocular e-mail to his staff admitting that he had been fired, asking for recommendations for a “fat camp” so he could lose the “Groupon 40,” and most inscrutably (to some) comparing his dismissal to playing the...

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Meet the Common Man's Robot: Headless and Adorable

LONG BEACH, California — Go into the typical American home and you’ll find a television, a computer, perhaps a videogame console, and even an iPad. But you won’t find a robot. What’s wrong with us?We haven’t found the right robot. Or at least that’s Keller Rinaudo’s take on the problem, presented at the TED conference Tuesday along with his creation: A $150 robot named Romo, which can stream...

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Cablevision Sues Viacom Over Bundled Channels

You pay too much for pay TV because your cable company is forced to purchase channels in bundles from media companies like Viacom — if it wants to offer MTV, it has to pay for CMT Pure Country and Teen Nick as well. Now one cable provider has had enough, and is suing for the right to purchase channels à la carte. Cablevision, a New York-based cable TV provider, filed an antitrust lawsuit against...

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Hot Trend: Tapping the Power of Cold to Lose Weight

I’m in the fetal position at the bottom of a swimming pool. Water temperature: 60 degrees Fahrenheit. In my lap there’s a 20-pound weight anchoring me in place. All I’m wearing is a Speedo, a nose plug, goggles, and a snorkel resembling an oversize asthma inhaler. The mouthpiece connects to two 4-foot hoses feeding out of the water and into a PC-sized box next to a laptop. After 20 minutes...

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MasterCard MasterPass Augments Your Digital Shopping Experience

For MasterCard, the future of payments isn’t an either-or situation for traditional plastic or digital methods. MasterCard MasterPass aims to streamline your entire shopping experience while bridging the gap between real world and digital payments.MasterPass is the next step in the company’s PayPass Wallet services, which brought NFC checkout systems to more than 700,000 merchants. The digital...

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That Syncing Feeling

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired...

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Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space

Asteroid impact craters are among the most interesting geological structures on any planet. Many other planets and moons in our solar system, including our own moon, are pock-marked with loads of craters. But because Earth has a protective atmosphere and is geologically active — with plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions, mostly relatively young oceanic crust, and...

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Zendesk Security Breach Affects Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest

Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that allowed attackers into its system, where they could access data from three customers this week. Wired learned those three clients were Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.The San Francisco-based company announced the breach in a blog post published early Thursday night. Tumblr notified affected users in an email at approximately...

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The Queen's New Gambit: Chess as a Great American Spectator Sport

Julian Schuster first heard the rumor a year and a half ago. Susan Polgar, the legendary grand master known to journalists as “the Queen,” was unhappy in her current position as Texas Tech’s chess coach. She was feeling unappreciated. She had made this known to certain people in the tight-knit world of chess, and the news had traveled from one of these confidants, a foreign grand master living...

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SwiftKey 4 Offers Satisfying Swiping and Almost Perfect Predictions

SwiftKey 4 is one of the best gesture keyboard apps ever. It is so good at predicting what you type, it borders on being creepy. I can rattle off e-mails, tweets and text messages to friends about sports, movies, tech, music — and based on what I’ve typed, SwiftKey occasionally finishes sentences word by word.It does this by collecting data on what is typed as it’s typed. The data is collected...

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<cite>Halo</cite> Creator Unveils Its Next Masterpiece, a Persistent Online World

"Citadel": Concept art from Bungie's Destiny.BELLEVUE, Washington — Destiny, the new game from the creator of Halo, isn’t just another shooter. It’s a persistent online multiplayer adventure, designed on a galactic scale, that wants to become your new life.“It isn’t a game,” went the oft-heard tagline at a preview event on Wednesday. “It’s a world where the most important stories are told...

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The Quirky World of Competitive Snow Carving Comes to California

Team Truckee entered the competition late, after Team Russia was unable to get visas in time. Their sculpture: "Rising Tide."The weekend at Northstar ski resort in Truckee, California, is beautiful, sunny, and in the 30s. For eight teams of snow carvers from around the world, though, it’s terrible — the melty snow is sloppy, hard to carve, and even dangerous.Teams of three from Finland, Japan,...

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Lebbeus Woods: The Architect Who Dared to Ask 'What If?'

He envisioned underground cities, floating buildings and an eternal space tomb for Albert Einstein worthy of the great physicist’s expansive intellect. With such grand designs, perhaps it’s not too surprising that the late Lebbeus Woods, one of the most influential conceptual architects ever to walk the earth, had only one of his wildly imaginative designs become a permanent structure.Instead of working...

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Never Tell Me the Odds: A Look at <cite>Star Wars</cite> Tabletop Gaming's Past and Present

Before J.J. Abrams was a twinkle in George Lucas' eye, Star Wars fans had another outlet for the continued adventures of their favorite characters: the tabletop. Whether playing with board games, miniatures, or pen-and-paper role-playing games, Star Wars has been a setting of choice for three decades and counting.Throughout this gallery, you'll find both hidden gems from Star Wars' past as well as...

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Overkill: If You Want to Stop Gun Violence, Start With Bullets

.223 RemingtonThe assault rifles used in mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora, Colorado, were loaded with .223 cartridges. As with most bullet types, hundreds of .223 choices are available; Cheaperthandirt.com, for example, sells 172 kinds that vary by weight, muzzle velocity, and form factor (e.g., full metal jacket, soft-point, jacketed hollow point).Our immense appetite for bullets—and...

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Executive Order Aims to Facilitate Sharing of Information on Threats

President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Tuesday designed to make it easier to disseminate classified information on threats against critical infrastructure systems and to lay the groundwork for obtaining information from the private sector that would help the government protect critical infrastructures in the U.S.The order, which runs eight pages (.pdf), directs the Attorney General’s...

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150 Boom Boxes and the Best Dance Party You've Never Been To

Finding the right place to stage a Decentralized Dance Party is more art than science. Which is why Gary Lachance is standing against a railing near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, looking perplexed. It’s nearly midnight and he’s just beginning what will be an all-night search of the city, looking for locations to flood with revelers for tomorrow night’s mobile bash. He might be tired—he...

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DC Comics Turns the Occupy Movement Into a Superhero Title

Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?In May, DC Comics will launch...

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