On boot camps designed to break kids of their web addiction.

Inside the world of competitive coding.

How Cantor Fitzgerald is bringing the principles of day trading to sports betting in Vegas.

An interview with Douglas Hofstadter, who after winning the Pulitzer for Gödel, Escher, Bach retreated into the lab and published only sparingly in technical journals, on what it would mean if a program could generate humor and/or masterful compositions.

The article that spawned a school of thought; an elegy for the age of the megahit and a primer for the niche-based future.

Yes, 311 helped solve the mysterious case of the maple syrup smell. But with the data from more than 100 million calls, it’s primed to explain far more.

Requiem for a viral hit.

How virtual worlds like Ultima Online form economies and the sellers who make a living in digital goods.

How “tissue engineering” will change regenerative medicine.

The story of two Canadian artificial intelligence visionaries who became bitter rivals and then both committed suicide in the same month.

For most people who participate in clinical trials, being a guinea pig is just a way to make a quick buck. For others, it’s a career.

Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong tabloid tycoon, thinks he’s found the future of journalism: an animation assembly line that can crank out clips recreating–or anticipating, or imagining–breaking news.

The unsolved killing of Russia’s most notorious spammer.

An American, born into privilege, became a bootleg DVD kingpin in Shanghai and then, in an unprecedented development, landed in Chinese prison.

How a dental equipment salesman from Germany named Klaus Teuber invented the perfect board game, Settlers of Catan.

An early 1995 peek at what happens when secretive groups meet the Internet: a Scientology Usenet group, populated by believers and critics, stirs conflict that results in raids.

After his wife disappears, Hans Reiser’s defense contacts a Wired writer who they believe can help explain the world of groundbreaking code, video games, and sci-fi that defines Reiser’s existence.

75 years after its founding, it’s still hard to explain exactly why Alcoholics Anonymous works.

One of the founders of Google discovered that he carried a gene that meant a 50% chance of developing Parkinson’s. In response, he is working to change and expedite the way that Parkinson’s research is conducted.

The urban legend about the guy who hooked a rocket up to the back of his car and drove/flew it into a mountain? The anonymous author claims the story is about him and some of his small town high school buddies.

“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.” –Steve Jobs, 1996

In the chaotic days before the Berlin Wall fell, the East German secret police shredded 45 million pages. Fifteen years later, a team of computer scientists figured out how to put it all back together.

What fragmented reading experiences do to neural circuitry. (It’s not good.)

Gerald Blanchard, the world’s most ingenious thief, made his first swipe at age six. And he didn’t stop, robbing banks and stealing jewels around the world until a pair of obsessed Winnipeg cops took his case.