Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Right-Wing Conspiracies Try to Wrest Media Shame Away From Broadcast, Twitter

From print to broadcast to online, there's very little the media's gotten right about this Boston tragedy before getting it wrong multiple times. The New York Post exaggerated the death toll from Monday's Boston Marathon bombings by 400 percent before joining InfoWars in misidentifying three diffe ... More >>

Prison Terms and Essay Grading: The Technology Gap Widens

On the front page of today's New York Times, there is a story about a software program that can instantly grade essays. The system was designed by EdX, a non-profit group founded by Harvard and MIT, and it is gaining momentum. Last year, Hewlett-Packard's grant-making arm held two contests, each w ... More >>

Privileged Information: The Fight for an Open Internet

No Place Like Om

Changing Minds: Advocates Reshape How We Think About Autism

Boom or Doom: This Environmental Disaster Is No Gold Rush

Does Groupon Hurt a Restaurant's Ratings?

Does Groupon bring out the trolls?​The selling point of daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial has long been that they bring in new customers and new revenue. Though there's concern that the online-deal market is saturated, deal sites may bring in as much as $1 billion in revenue this year ... More >>

"Another Earth": Shoestring Sci-Fi Meets Treacly Redemption Drama

Aaron Swartz, Online Activist Tied to Reddit, Indicted for Hacking

Aaron Swartz​An Internet activist involved in the early days of the popular San Francisco-based news-sharing site Reddit has been indicted in Massachusetts on charges that that he stole millions of files by hacking into an academic database at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).Aaron ... More >>

Double Drain: Program Pays Cops Pensions While Still on the Force

"Take Me Home Tonight": Coke-Fueled '80s Nostalgia

Pomplamoose Calls the Tune

No record deal? No CDs? No problem. How Pomplamoose is modifying the music industry.

Singularity Summit Highlights: World Fails to End

Good guess, champ! ​Well, the world didn't end this weekend. Nobody really expected it to, anyway -- the Singularity Summit at the Hyatt Regency (about which we wrote in some detail last Friday) was less about invoking an immediate techno-cataclysm than it was about laying the groundwork for o ... More >>

iHelp for Autism

For autistic children, the new iPad is an effective, portable device for teaching communication and social skills. It’s also way cool.

Mapping Noise and Voices in the Tenderloin

​What would happen if you hung sound sensors above the street in the Tenderloin, and then mapped the noise levels over two and a half days? You can see the pulsing decibel levels yourself, via the TenderNoise project, and then check out its sister site, TenderVoice, which allows you to browse geog ... More >>

American Grilled Cheese Kitchen Expected to Launch Any Day Now

John BirdsallThe decor feels like a hug and a kiss from Grandma.​Just under two years ago, right after she'd won the Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles (again), Heidi Gibson was asked if she had any words to celebrate her victory. "Yes," she screamed, "I'm opening a grilled cheese re ... More >>

Elite College Hoaxer Showdown: Stanford Vs. Harvard

​News this week of Adam Wheeler, the 23-year-old who lied his way into Harvard and almost into Yale, brought back fond memories of Azia Kim, the dorm-squatter who was discovered posing as a Stanford student two years ago. We have to ask: Who's the better college hoaxer? TV movie-ready back st ... More >>

Cry for Yelp

The popular web site stands accused of acting like a ‘modern-day Mafia.’

The Poor News Bears

City College budget cuts complicate Hollywood ending for student bioengineers.

Why We Heart Scanwiches

ScanwichesPrettier than the rose window at Chartres. Tastier, too.​Since 2008, John Chonko's blog Scanwiches has been making us laugh. His beautiful scans of sandwich cross-sections against black backgrounds sometimes look like edible cathedral windows, but in his singular, unwavering focus -- ... More >>

What Hath Duncan Wrought?

Hammer Speaks at Stanford Business School

Still Can't Touch Dis: Hammer Nothing like celebrating St. Patrick's Day by learning how to make green, eh laddie? If you'd rather own a bar than hit the bars, spend tomorrow night at Stanford Business School soaking up game from none other than Hammer. The occasion is a panel discussion, sponsored ... More >>

Clash of the Quackers

The Bay Quackers tours were a big duck in a small pond until a bigger flock showed up.

The American Dream's $700 billion price tag

All Hail The Fluffernutter: Marshmallow Fluff Turns 90

Made From Scrap: From Debris to Décor

Ask the Experts

Coupling

How I landed onstage with my husband, and what I did about it

Where the Wild Things Are

A haunting mix of Indonesian music and Shakespearean mystery

Anarchism for Dummies

Noam if you want to

Student of Concern

Will we be more secure -- or just less competitive -- if the government forces hundreds of thousands of international science students to get export licenses simply to look through a microscope?

Programming Art

Tech invades the gallery

Guitar Dreams

Adrian Freed's decades-long desire to marry music and technology is finally going public. Will anyone listen?

A Duty to Hack

Adrian Lamo, the 22-year-old "homeless hacker" famous for raiding New York Times computers, pursues his vision of public service by cracking another major corporate network. It's a crime, of course. It's also what he was born to do.

Not Your Mother's Peace Movement

Major anti-war groups change strategy, hoping to win over mainstream voters the Bush administration can't ignore

Sound and Vision

Without the inventions of Max Matthews, we wouldn't have CDs, MP3s, techno -- or much more

Machine Love

Casting type in the Presidio

Crying Whale

Environmental groups sent out a worldwide call to save the gray whale from a Mexican salt plant. They got millions of dollars and thousands of new members. But scientists found no threat to the whales.

Songs of Science

If you don't know birds have accents, you haven't been attending your birdsong symposia

Looking for God at Berkeley

A provocative theory called "intelligent design" claims evolution is hogwash. But it's not the usual religious zealots leading the latest attack on Darwin. It's scientists and professors at Cal.

Study Thrall

Brilliance is hip and even -- ahem -- sexy at Intel's Science and Engineering Fair

A HAL of an Idea

Dr. David Stork is trying to create a new computer that thinks like a human being. But he needs your help.

That Was the Wit That Was

Decades after he left the stage to teach math in Santa Cruz, the voice of legendary satirist Tom Lehrer still echoes

Spy vs Spite

The Clinton administration has praised the Anti-Defamation League for helping shield kids from Internet hate. But should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the Web?

Digging Deep

Millennium has folks lining up to bury the past

Dog Bites

Apocalypse Pretty Soon

The Unsinkable Ralph Henke

A rolling battleship is the next project for the man who brought us the world's largest motor home. Even after 60 years and a heart transplant, the ideas just keep coming.

From Russia With Diamonds

In 1995, Golden ADA Inc., a San Francisco diamond-importing firm, collapsed, unveiling an international trail of theft and betrayal that embarrassed San Francisco luminaries involved with the company. Now, newly unsealed court files show that high-level m

Dog Bites

System Crashing

Buying Wired magazine may align you with the digerati, but buying its stock might sink you into poverty