How to Stop Worrying and Love Twitter's New Two-Factor Verification

Reuters

Twitter has added two-step verification to increase its security after all the recent hacks into high profile media accounts, but you should go sign up for it right this minute — because everyone's vulnerable to password attacks these days, even if the new cellphone hiccup seems cumbersome.

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 24, 2013

The Samsung Galaxy S IV Reviews Are Great for the HTC One

With the Samsung Galaxy S IV set to go on sale this weekend on AT&T and in another month on Verizon, the reviewers have taken the purported iPhone killer for a spin and despite all its bells and whistles, they still like another Android phone a lot better.

Comments | 24,163 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 23, 2013

Good Timing: Twitter Will Soon Release a Two-Step Security Solution

Some Twitter employee had a pretty rough day on Tuesday, after a hack led to the AP sending a fake tweet to its 2 million followers. If only the hacker had waited, Twitter could've stopped them!

Comments | 1,558 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Even After the Lies of Boston, Twitter Probably Won't Build an Edit Button

After all the "misinformation flying around" that ended up as a part of the official news record during the hunt for the bombing suspects, it would make a lot of sense for Twitter to let you truly modify tweets. But it's unlikely Twitter would make such a move, according to two former Twitter developers and three social media developers who spoke with The Atlantic Wire.

Comments | 2,141 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Why Apple's Giving Back So Much Money to Its Investors

Of course Wall Street is happy with Apple's latest earnings report: it included the company's biggest dividends and biggest buyback program ever, which increases its capital return program from $10 to $60 billion—and its quarterly dividend 15 percent. So that's one way to calm everyone down.

Comments | 3,697 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Look What the Hacked AP Tweet About White House Bombs Did to the Market

The stock market took an instant nosedive — and made just as instant of a recovery — in response to an alarming tweet from the Associated Press account to its hundreds of thousands of followers at lunchtime on the East Coast Tuesday.

Comments | 5,638 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 23, 2013

Today's Best

Five Best Tuesday Columns

Michael Chertoff and Dallas Lawrence on social media helping a manhunt, Erwin Chemerinsky on the constitutional rights of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Richard Overy on the use of the word 'Nazi,' John Villasenor on ownership and Google Glass, and William Germano on writing for readers. 

Comments | 1,555 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 23, 2013

Prepare for Apple's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Earnings Report Today

Wall Street, analysts, and all those investors with Apple inside their 401(k)s are assuming the worst come Tuesday evening, and right when they would love to see signs of hope. It's best you get ready now.

Comments | 583 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Seven Days in 100 Words: The Facebook Phone

The typical gadget review these days can run thousands of words and cover hundreds of features before telling you what you really want to know: is this thing any good? The Atlantic Wire will cut to the chase after spending a week with a device and give you just the bottom line. 

Comments | 1,165 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Netflix Has Almost Already Paid for 'House of Cards' in New Subscribers

By adding more than 2 million U.S. subscribers this quarter and another 1 million elsewhere in the world, Netflix has nearly earned back its entire $100 million investment in House of Cards — in under three months, according to our calculations based on Monday's earnings report.

Comments | 3,106 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

How Green Is Facebook's Massive Green Roof?

Tech companies are always battling each other for the title of the greenest organization out there and these so-called green roofs are the latest turf for these environmentalist wars.

Comments | 971 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

Stat of the Day

10 Million People Watch Netflix Without Paying

All that anecdotal password sharing we've been hearing about is more than just a few media savvy friends passing around their logins: One analyst estimates that something like 10 million people watch Netflix Instant, gratis.

Comments | 18,093 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

The Rise of the Term 'Glasshole,' Explained by Linguists

With all the lucky first Google Glass owners now starting to receive their wearable face computers in the mail, we are already seeing a rise in the "glasshole"—an endearing term used to describe people who do not use the gadgets in socially acceptable ways. 

Comments | 28,624 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 22, 2013

The Internet Is Not Freaking Out About the SOPA Sequel

Over 200 sites are participating in today's Internet shutdown to protest the cyber-security bill Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which the House of Representatives passed last week. But, the big names that showed up to last year's nearly Internet-wide protest of SOPA—like Wikipedia and Wired—haven't shut down their sites this time.

Comments | 9,896 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 20, 2013

Would the Real Sarah Hanson Please Stand Up?

What happens when a 19-year-old programmer extensively covered by media outlets this week probably doesn't exist? 

Comments | 3,288 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 19, 2013

How Reddit Fueled the Scanner-Happy Media to Out Innocent Boston 'Suspects'

If you thought the New York Post's "Bag Men" outing was bad, the most crowdsourced terror investigation in American history transformed from Internet sleuthing of FBI photos on Thursday night into a lynch mob — from Reddit to a police scanner to social media and beyond — that led to the outing of even more innocent people as would-be suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Comments | 53,293 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 18, 2013

An Entire Town in Illinois Is Being Evacuated a After Levee Breach

London Mills, Illinois is being evacuated after flooding turned from bad to worse on Thursday. No, we're not talking about a few blocks of the town. Police are ordering the entire town out their homes.

Comments | 6,355 Views

By J.K. Trotter

Apr 18, 2013

NASA Just Found Some Very Earth-Like Planets

Since being launched into space in March 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been searching the Milky Way for planets that might sustain liquid water. Witness its latest discovery.

Comments | 2,311 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Yahoo's New Weather App Will Change Every Day of Your Life

Yahoo already helps power the Apple weather app that comes built in to every iPhone, but the newly mobile first company has just launched its own proprietary meteorological wonder — indeed, this photo-first new app is so wondrous that you should go download Yahoo! Weather right now.

Comments | 3,274 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Why Hasn't the FBI's Facial Recognition Technology Found the Boston Bombers?

According to multiple reports, the FBI's investigation into potential perpetrators in the Boston Marathon bombings now centers on "clear video images" that may be released today — possibly without names to faces or answers to America's questions.

Comments | 21,833 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 18, 2013

Twitter's Music Service Is Here and It's Not Really a Music Service

After a soft roll out with celebrities over Coachella weekend, Twitter Music is here for everyone else, after a big debut on Good Morning America on Thursday.

Comments | 192 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

What We Can Learn from '100 Percent Men'

Is a Tumblr that collects instances of groups curiously lacking women the best way to change a deeply rooted problem or is it just making the case for tokenism?

Comments | 3,074 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 17, 2013

Google Fiber Is Coming to Provo, Utah — Because It Already Had Fancy Internet

Last Tuesday, Google announced another reason to be jealous of Austin, Texas — the city became the second place in the U.S. where Google would offer its super fast, affordable fiber Internet service. Well, this week you can be jealous of Provo, Utah.

Comments | 769 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

Funny or Die's 'iSteve' Is Driving Apple Fanboys Nuts

Nobody finds Funny or Die's very unfunny new feature length film less funny than all the Apple nerds who were very quick to point out all of the movie's techie inaccuracies within hours of its debut on the comedy site late Tuesday night.

Comments | 5,880 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

New Boston Bomb Parts and Crime Scene Photos Provide Early Marathon Answers

While officials asked citizens to help find the suspect and Internet gurus helped make sense of the "bag or backpack" holding the explosives, important details have emerged from the "ends of the Earth" effort to understand the bombs themselves.

Comments | 21,713 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 17, 2013

Update: Google Is Working Again

After a disruption this morning, the Google App Status Dashboard has everything running again:

Comments | 560 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 16, 2013

Google Glass Packaging Looks a Lot Like Apple iPhone Packaging

The first few hundred Google Glass headsets are now in the hands of the luck "Explorers" who coughed up $1,500 for the device. Obviously, the proud new owners meticulously documented the unboxing process.

Comments | 6,142 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 16, 2013

What Can Doctors Do to Save a Leg from Amputation?

The doctors fighting to save the lives — and limbs — of those wounded in the Monday's bombing will have the benefit of recent major advances, many of them results of medical experience during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in what is called limb salvaging.

Comments | 5,182 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

The Best Ways to Contact Loved Ones After the Boston Marathon Bombings

There is at least some relative calm amidst the panic that is the "ongoing event" in Boston right now: Cellphone service is overwhelmed in the area, but there remain important ways for people to reach loved ones online.

Comments | 5,736 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

How Is This Silicon Valley Prostitution Boom Different Than All Others?

With every tech boom comes a tale not only of the nouveau riche using their disposable income to buy sex, but also about how the very technologies making these clients rich is changing the sex work industry.

Comments | 5,543 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Apr 15, 2013

You're One Step Closer to On-Demand Organ Transplants

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital say they have successfully "grown" a kidney in a laboratory environment and transplanted it back into a healthy animal, raising the tantalizing possibility of a future with organs grown in lab dishes — and a potential end to donor shortages.

Comments | 956 Views

FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market

The agency refuses to disclose the names of the drugs it is reassessing, on the grounds that doing so would expose "confidential commercial information." But here are five drugs that used the controversial tests to help win FDA approval.

Comments | 1,338 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 15, 2013

Dish's $25.5 Billion Offer for Sprint Is All About Cord-Cutting

Dish is willing to pay $25.5 billion for Sprint because it thinks the wireless high-speed Internet Sprint can offer is the future of streaming TV.

Comments | 954 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

How to Choose the Right Version of Facebook Home for You

Facebook's biggest foray into cellphone software, Home, is now officially available to the cellphone masses, and there sure are a lot of ways to download it. For those having trouble deciding whether to take the plunge, we put together this little personality guide for the dawn of the "Facebook phone" era.

Comments | 937 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

Is Twitter Really the Best Place to Discover Music?

With Twitter's new music service reportedly coming out sometime this weekend, it's time to consider if we really want to go to our Twitter friends to find new tunes.

Comments | 749 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

Reading Through Michael Arrington's Info Dump on Jenn Allen

Last night former Silicon Valley start-up big-wig Michael Arrington published a letter from his lawyer to Jenn Allen, one of the women who has accused him of sexual assault, most of which was meant to destroy her character and credibility.

Comments | 3,329 Views

By Philip Bump and Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 12, 2013

So, How Much Bitcoin Value Has Vanished as of This Minute?

With all the spikes and subsequent crashes in Bitcoin's value over the last couple of days, it's hard to keep track of how the currency and all of its enthusiastic owners are doing.

Comments | 9,611 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 11, 2013

Apple Will Pay for Those Water-Damaged iPhones After All

Court documents show that Apple has agreed to pay $53 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed  by countless iPhone and iPod Touch owners who claim that the company failed to honor its own warranty.

Comments | 12,595 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 11, 2013

No, That German Hacker Probably Can't Hijack an Airplane with Software

An alarming dispatch from the Hack In The Box security conference in Amsterdam arrived on Wednesday: a hacker says he's found a way to take over airplane controls. That's probably not true.

Comments | 3,329 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 11, 2013

It's Time to Write a Will for Your Digital Life

Google's new "digital afterlife" feature feels creepy and morbid, but it's the kind of responsible data control we should embrace for the rest of our Internet selves.

Comments | 555 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 11, 2013

Hey, Look! The Winklevii Finally Invested in Something Early Enough: Bitcoin.

The $11 million stake in Bitcoin revealed today by the Winklevoss twins does absolutely nothing for the flailing legitimacy of the controversial online currency — "growing pains," they say — but at least it proves to the world that they were in on this particular trend before Mark Zuckerberg could steal it from them.

Comments | 3,605 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 11, 2013

Even the Twitter Elite Say It's OK to Hate Twitter Now

The sentiment from newfound Twitter haters like Wired writer Mat Honan and Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein is not as simple as the dismissal of haters past. The new argument is more complex than it-is-what-you-make-of-it: Now, Twitter doesn't let you make it good enough.

Comments | 2,921 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 11, 2013

Microsoft Is Betting on a Smaller Surface

To go with its not popular enough Microsoft Surface RT and Pro, the Windows maker has decided to make a smaller, and hopefully cheaper, tablet that in theory more buyers will want, sources tell The Wall Street Journal.

Comments | 552 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 10, 2013

The PC Market Hasn't Been This Bad Since IBM Released Its First PC

When Microsoft released Windows 8 last fall, a lot of people thought it could be the PC's savior, a hip-looking new thing that made those clunky IBM-compatibles cool again. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Comments | 5,748 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 10, 2013

Today's Bitcoin Crash Shows Why It's Not Really a Currency

After enjoying a week or so of increasing value, Bitcoin took a huge dive today, which explains why the "virtual currency" is not a currency at all, but more of a stock people have invested in to get rich.

Comments | 9,750 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 10, 2013

Everything You Need to Know About the Impending Cicada Sex Invasion

The bugs are coming for the Super Bowl of cicada mating season, and they are due to arrive, up and out of your trees and with the sexual sounds of a power saw, sometime very soon. Here's an illustrated entomological guide.

Comments | 27,577 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 10, 2013

TV Networks Will Say Anything to Keep You Paying for TV

Two of the major broadcast networks are now threatening to remove their stations from the free airwaves if a little start-up called Aereo succeeds, with CBS joining Fox (and the NBCUniversal network Univision) in their pledges to go cable. But should anyone believe them?

Comments | 1,104 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 10, 2013

This Facebook Phone Sure Is Addictive

Despite all the negativity around the Facebook phone, the early reviewers can all agree on one thing: The Facebook phone got them using Facebook — a lot. Maybe even too much.

Comments | 3,304 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Apr 10, 2013

'Elysium' Is Ready to Be Your Favorite Summer Blockbuster

Neill Blomkamp's District 9 followup — about which we knew next to nothing until this week, and which, as of last night, has a full trailer out in the wild — is officially going to be the next great sci-fi movie. Yes, the buzz is that good. 

Comments | 1,835 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 9, 2013

The Blockbuster CBS Ratings for March Madness Are Bad for Your Cable Bill

This year's tournament brought Kevin Ware, that Spike Albrecht kid, and the best television ratings in nearly two decades, which only means CBS and Turner's deal was totally worth jacking up your cable bill for — and might be once again.

Comments | 1,836 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Apr 9, 2013

Why Google Fiber and Its High-Speed Clones Are Too Expensive for Your City

Austin residents will soon have Internet access that Google claims runs 100 times faster than the average broadband connection, for "roughly similar" prices to Google's first Fiber test case, Kansas City, a city where Internet bills run a very reasonable $70 per month but which provides a cautionary tale for the expensive realities of Google's all-too-pilot friendly project. 

Comments | 1,652 Views

  • The Atlantic Wire on Twitter
  • The Atlantic Wire RSS Feed
  • The Atlantic Wire iPhone App