You're sitting in an air-conditioned trailer somewhere in Nevada, one hand clutching a joystick, the other tapping out commands on a keyboard. You're a US Air Force (or CIA) Predator drone pilot. You're about two hours into a 12-hour spy- and kill-sh…
Generally, my assumption of the ins and outs of crime scene forensics is a mythicism of field detectives performing high-tech feats in order to solve a mystery with some encrusted semen. I'd only expect that investigation units have access to some aw…
Walking through an urban college campus can be an extremely claustrophobic experience. With ever-increasing enrollment are one factor, there are the young and eagerly participatory students, destined to have you join a club or support a cause. "Buy a…
Plenty of people have used Craigslist to hunt down and entrust perfectly amicable roommates (check), to sell cars that were worth less than the work they needed (check), to buy $2 seats to Mets games (check, Shea days), and to trade a bunch of other
The last time we heard from Isaac Wilder, co-founder of the "Free Network Foundation":http://thefnf.org/, he was getting the hell out of New York City. We first met Wilder, whose peer-to-peer, wifi-hotspot driven communications initiative took front
They are overhead, far way, buzzing in the distance, doing their thing. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are "cruising over Benghazi":http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/14/us-protests-libya-airport-idUSBRE88D0PJ20120914 in the wake of attack on th…
Border security will never die. Federal budgets and immigration waves may both be on the wane, but hey, no matter. The U.S-Mexico border-industrial complex continues booming apace, with some even saying there's no end in sight in pushing to build up
Long the bane of poor, misunderstood New Jersey, the chemical industry is increasingly shifting production to developing countries, where production costs are lower. Doing dirty business in the developing world also has the added benefit of fewer reg…
Apple's victory against alleged patent infringer Samsung may help keep Steve Jobs' vicious vision inside Apple, but keeping its treasure hidden away will only work for Apple as long as consumers put a premium on its designs. As things stand, Apple is…
Nobody has the slightest idea who (what?) has been busy "funneling $350 million worth of whiz-bang drug-bust border spy tech":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/7/nobody-s-sure-who-s-supplying-mexico-with-350-million-worth-of-border-spy-tech to the M…
It may not crack whips and fight Nazis, at least not yet. But it still sounds pretty badass: An interdisciplinary research team out of Vanderbilt University is using a semi-autonomous SUAVe - their very own micro Indiana Drone (sorry) - to map the ru…
Maybe you've seen this photo that's been spinning around the Internet for a few years purporting to show the uncanny similarity between individual mouse-brain neurons and a model image of the universe. Here it is: !{width:584px}http://www.viceland…
I don't play games. Never have, really. During a blip of my youth you could've found me posted up in my parent's basement, getting down on brick-era Game Boy and SNES classics. True. But for me, as with too many other kids my age itching to kick off
OK, everybody. Detroit "ruin porn":http://www.vice.com/read/something-something-something-detroit-994-v16nB lost its poignancy years ago. The city is in "a veritable renaissance":http://www.vice.com/uneven-terrain/detroit-lives-vbs-part-1-of-3, and t…
Parking is a real drag. Everything about it sucks, especially in the city. If you're not willing to shell out a bunch of hard cash to some sketchball lot attendant, you're forced to waste precious time idling around, waiting for a street spot to free…
When urban planners were trying to turn New York's Roosevelt Island from a haven for the disabled and the mentally ill into a liveable city, they got "utopian":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Island#Architecture. Lying beneath their plans was
In the aisles of a Wal-Mart, I don't know what wrinkles my nose more, the little 8-year-old kid with the little wheels in his shoes, whizzing past me with a push-pop, or his parents that bought the damn things. Probably, they had little choice, upon
Well, that sure didn't take long. Just as the Federal Aviation Administration begins streamlining its process for approving requests from drone-hungry government and law enforcement agencies - a move that's drawing fire from digital and privacy right…
Most talk around the Federal Aviation Administration throttling to fully integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into U.S. airspace by 2015 has taken to breathless alarmism. I won’t even begin to except myself, here – "the accidental highs and lows":http:…
The U.S., of course, is not officially at war with Pakistan. But if anything, the CIA's Predators and Reapers, despite "getting the boot":http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/12/12/you-don-t-have-to-go-home-but-you-can-t-drone-here-u-s-evicted-from-secre…
General Atomics isn’t publicly traded on Wall Street, so obtaining any specific information regarding its balances is a daunting task. I almost feel bad for the Public Relations Manager handling my request for comment. I assume she delivers these hol…
William Anders was a Catholic before he was shot into space. After seeing the earth from the Apollo 8 and snapping what has become the definitive photograph of our world, Anders returned home a changed man. The specific beliefs and precepts of his fa…
“Digital sprawl” is guaranteed to lead to our doom.
