Welcome to the NASA Grand Challenge, where everyone from government agencies to citizen scientists will compete to figure out the best way to detect and study earth-threatening asteroids.
A note to @MarsCuriosity's 1,270,220 followers on Twitter: NASA's intrepid rover is a she. The women behind her massively popular social media presence confirmed today that "she" is the proper pronoun for referring to the Mars explorer.
Yes, Twitter isn't working right now, and, yes, Twitter is working to fix it. While Twitter hasn't yet offered a specific reason for the disruption, it very well may be a server-capacity issue.
Rumormongering about an iPad Mini with Retina Display is sort of the perfect rumor for gadget blogs because one day between now and forever, when Apple inevitably releases said device, their predictions will come true.
Discovered: Does sex really vanish when men do more chores?; weighing black holes; why you should get most of your eating in before 3:00 p.m.; a quarter-billion year old tapeworm.
In one of the most talked-about columns on social media today, The Week columnist Matt Lewis tries to explain how he got trapped in the "prison" of Twitter's apparent decline — even though he's really just trapped himself, by way of a really bad Twitter feed.
The social network's latest earnings report shows why a lot of good is never enough for Facebook, especially when it comes to making money off you and your cellphone.
After a strange unveiling of its new operating system, two phones, and a company rebranding, BlackBerry lifted the embargo on reviews of one of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, the $599 touchscreen Z10. Here's the early word.
Not that Research in Motion was ever very cool beyond the corporate crowd, but the company's rebranding, as simply BlackBerry, came with an outward appearance not of confidence so much as outright desperation.
The company formerly known as Research in Motion has unveiled its hail-mary BlackBerry 10 operating system, including two new phones — the Q10 and Z10.
Samsung has won the latest round of its neverending patent war with Apple — and at just the right moment in its cultural ascendance, giving the Korean gadget giant another notch on its "better-than-Apple" belt.
Discovered: Physicians who see too many patients are more prone to slip up; gay men are gayer than straight guys; taking trays out of cafeterias reduces waste; new criteria for 'habitable' planets.
Amazon's earnings were filled with all sorts of misses, including a 45 percent decline in profits, and yet the stock is up around 10 percent in after-hours trading because of one good metric.
Silicon Valley blogger Sarah Lacy thinks the reincarnation of the Gawker gossip blog Valleywag shouldn't cover gossip because people in the tech start-up world like to keep their boring lives private, a hilarious statement since Silicon Valley has industrialized the public flaunting of people's boring private lives.
During his immigration speech on Tuesday afternoon President Barack Obama cited the Brazilian born Instagram co-creator Mike Krieger as an example of the potential jobs and money a non-American can bring to our country, a strange choice considering how teeny-tiny the photo-sharing app industry is.
Despite hiring a couple of linguists to get its new search engine to move "beyond 'Robospeak" and actually understand how people talk, Facebook hasn't actually taught Graph Search how to do that very well just yet. And that's a problem.
Just like Vine, pretty much any of the other "Instagram for video" platforms that have come out in the last couple of years have experienced an inundation of inappropriate content.
Despite the rise of the phablet and its friends, the battle of the very expensive tablets is very much upon us as Apple announced an $800, 128GB version of its iPad on Tuesday morning — less than two weeks before its enemies at Microsoft will launch a $900, 128GB tablet, the Surface Pro.
Discovered: Erectile dysfunction meds and green tea team up to fight cancer; cell phone towers are responsible for many bird deaths; look at this tractor beam in action; shooting your belly full of botox won't make you skinny.
Nick Denton surprised some when he revealed he was relaunching Gawker's old tech rumor blog Valleywag this morning, as reported by Business Insider's Alyson Shontell. We asked a pair of old Valleywag editors what they think of the resurrection.
The sleek new revamped Myspace has no problem paying major labels for the right to stream their music. But indie labels aren't seeing any of that kickback, and they're furious about it.
On the occasion of Data Privacy Day, Twitter says it's giving away user information requested by the U.S. government... without a warrant. It's the continuation of a frightening trend that's as frightening as it is growing.
Twitter was quick to defend itself Monday morning after a pornographic clip briefly made its way in front of all users on the Editor's Picks of its new app, but how much of a porn problem does Vine already have?
The first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day has been canceled because of a number of "valid risks" with using a hashtag to prove a point about the way readers often objectify female tech writers.
It's actually pretty surprising that it took everyone three days to figure out that Twitter's new cell phone camera-powered video sharing app, Vine, is perfect for porn.
You might not be sold on Twitter's new short video app Vine, but we challenge you to try and stop watching Vinepeek. You won't. You'll be stuck for 20 minutes before mustering the will power to look away.
If you were skimming the news this morning, we could understand why you might be confused and thinking that the hacking collective Anonymous has access to real U.S. warheads. Stop worrying, they don't.
Discovered: Omega-3s make cow dairy more nutritious; protons are just a tiny bit smaller than we thought, and that has huge implications; HIV's ancient origins; ADHD medicine is putting more people in the emergency room.
Keith Rabois, the chief operating officer of Square who resigned from the payment company of the future with little public explanation late Thursday, has now revealed that he left amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Electrolytes aren't the only thing quenching your thirst when you drink Gatorade. An ingredient patented for use as a flame retardant has been in the formula until now, as PepsiCo Inc. plans to phase out the substance from Gatorade... while keeping it in other products.
Facebook has now clarified why it blocked Twitter's new video-sharing app Vine, suggesting on its developer blog Friday afternoon that Facebook didn't think much of Vine's integration — or lack thereof — with the social network
Even after a contentious fight this week to turn it around, CBS is still enforcing a made-up rule making CNET tip-toe around lawsuits and products that the media giant sees as a threat.
Apple's terrible, horrible, no good, historically bad day on the markets Thursday has spilled over into Friday, with Apple ceding back to Exxon Mobil the title of the most valuable company in the world.
President Obama violated the Constitution by filling three National Labor Relations Board seats in the midst of a Senate recess, according to a court ruling issued today. "Told you so," says every conservative on Twitter.
Following its snobbish tradition of doing away with longstanding Internet-related terminology, the French government is replacing "hashtag" with "mot-diese" — to which we say... bravo!
Instead of the usual song and dance about how privacy is important to companies in the business of selling our data, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer gave a refreshingly honest take today at the World Economic Forum on how privacy actually works .
In a multi-layered, Foxconn-sprinkled update on its working conditions in Chinese factories, Apple has released a report that claims to have found no underage workers in "any of our final assembly suppliers." But Apple's supply chain goes much deeper.
Twitter launched a new product called Vine on Thursday, one that's as confusing as it is intriguing -- just like Twitter itself was when it started. Unsurprisingly, Facebook wants nothing to do with it.
Discovered: Carbo-loading is why we have cute dogs; dung beetles follow the stars; research to resume on H5N1 avian flu; look at this newly discovered Brazilian bird before it goes extinct.
Sales figures for its new tablet were perhaps the most conspicuously absent part of the software giant's on-target earnings report after the markets closed on Thursday. Here's why.
One of the choices was obvious, and the other was, well, Ben Affleck, but Disney and Lucusfilm executives have apparently chosen King of the Nerds J.J. Abrams to direct Star Wars: Episode VII.
The vice president's key message was about "gun safety," but he also had some choice words for gun-rights advocates.
With its new video sharing app, Twitter has once again dictated the length of our online expression, allotting a maximum six seconds for its new embeddable clips. Is that such a good thing?
President Obama will be confronted with the first big policy decision of his second term where environmentalists and business interests are at odds: the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Despite promising to act on climate change in his inaugural address, all signs point to the controversial project going forward.
Facebook announced Thursday that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will host his first political fundraiser at his home for... New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Is the world's most famous young exec actually a conservative wolf in a Silicon Valley hoodie? Time for an investigation.
The latest great idea in saving big-old tech companies is to remind people of a better era.
Could the library of the future replace bookshelves with petri dishes? New research into the possibility of storing information in DNA has already preserved words by Shakespeare and Martin Luther King in genetic material.
Apple's tanking stock doesn't just mean a lot of lost money for Apple employees and tech traders, but the rest of us, too. It is very likely that either you or your 401k has some Apple shares.
As if Google's launching a free Wi-Fi network in New York City earlier this month wasn't curious enough, now the search giant is asking the FCC for a license to create an "experimental radio service."
Discovered: The predictable race and political affiliation of "reverse racism" victims; car crashes are more deadly for the morbidly obese; ADHD on the rise in high-income minority communities; plain labeling could cut smoking rates.
Today federal authorities charged three men with building and disseminating a virus that crippled NASA computers and brought in tens of millions of dollars for cybercriminals. The new court documents detail the inner workings of Eastern Europe's cybercrime market.
Have a story we missed? A link we have to click? A sharp opinion about the news? Instead of waiting for us to post it, tell us on the Open Wire.
Submit your news and ideas | See all reader postsThe Atlantic Wire is your authoritative guide to the news and ideas that matter most right now. Our team tracks newsmakers and opinions across the entire media spectrum: newspapers, web sites, television, radio and magazines.
But we do more than just collect information. By synthesizing, analyzing and summarizing what’s out there, and adding new information when we can, we are a news engine that gives you a quick and valuable account of the issues of the day.
Have a hot tip? A story we missed? Tell us on the Open Wire
How to send us editorial or technical feedback
Get Five Best Columns in your inbox each morning (preview)
