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It's been a long week. You haven't had much time to devote to keeping current on the news. We get it. But now it's the weekend and complaining about your significant other to your friends is not a fruitful topic of conversation. Instead, impress your brunch buddies with your inside knowledge of what the internet's been buzzing about all week.
__Is the Internet Conscious?
__Neuroscientist Christof Koch thinks consciousness arises when the components of complex systems interact. The more connections these parts have, the more consciousness that arises. By that measure, one could say that the internet -- with its billions of interconnected transistors -- is, at some level, a conscious beast. [WIRED Science]
The Original NSA Whistleblower
Edward Snowden is currently the world's most famous whistleblower. But four decades before he blew the lid off the NSA's internet snooping, Perry Fellwock went public to expose the agency's dirty secrets. Now after some 30 years of silence, he finally speaks up again. [Gawker]
Amazon Isn't the Global King of Retail Yet
Amazon wants to attain global retail domination, but other online outfits have the advantage of understanding the local culture and needs of the people they serve in a way Amazon simply can't. Will Alibaba and Snapdeal steamroll Amazon's quest to rule the Chinese and Indian markets? [WIRED Business]
Enter Apple's New Mothership Campus
We uncovered more images of Apple's new Cupertino campus, including more than 20 previously unseen renderings dug up from the city's municipal archives. The campus, which is slated to be completed in 2016, is one of the last Apple projects Steve Jobs was involved in. [WIRED Design]
Facebook's New Breed of Network Engineer
Usually network engineers don't mess with the closed-source router software that connects Facebook to the internet. But a new line of hackable, open source switches and routers are changing that. The company is currently testing this new gear and hopes to deploy it in their new datacenter next year. [WIRED Enterprise]
The Bills Take on the World
Bill Gates and President Bill Clinton want to help improve the world by funding science and investing in infrastructure to deliver better healthcare. And they're doing it by taking what they learned from their previous careers. Watch the two Bills in this exclusive interview. [WIRED Business]
Goodbye to the Man Who Gave the World Lorenzo's Oil
When his son developed a rare genetic disease that eats away at the nervous system, world-famous economist Augusto Odone hunkered down to study the disease with no cure. Lorenzo's Oil -- the resulting concoction of olive and rapeseed oils -- turned out to be his life's greatest contribution, though it came too late to help his own child. Odone died last month. [The Economist]
Robot, Round Up My Cows
On some dairy farms, robots help farmers milk their cows. But Australian researchers are working on an autonomous robo-herder that could also help farmers herd their cows. The experimental four-wheeled 'bot looks a bit like the spawn of Wall-E and Shakey the Robot. [BBC News]
This Freaky Disease Turns Starfish Into Slime
No one knows what causes Starfish Wasting Syndrome, a disease that basically turns starfish into a puddle of slime. But now, with the help of divers, scientists are putting together a map of where this freaky disease has struck in the hopes of tracking down the culprit. [High Country News]
__The Choice Between Preventing Drug Resistance and Saving Lives __
Workers in Africa are serving up anti-malarial drugs to children -- before they get the disease. While this could save thousands of lives, scientists worry that it will cause widespread drug resistance. Will history repeat itself? [Nature]
__Are You Spending More Time Shopping for Dessert Than Veggies? Stores Want to Track You __
Retailers want to know how you're trekking through their stores and malls so they can target you with ads and offers in real-time the same way online stores like Amazon do. Are you spending more time in the cookie aisle or the sports section? Right now, brick-and-mortar store owners have no way of knowing, but that could soon change. [MIT Technology Review]
Spanish Translation of WIRED's November Cover Story
We translated Joshua Davis' story about how student-centered education is unleashing a new generation of geniuses. Traducimos el reportaje de Joshua Davis sobre como el aprendizaje independiente ha desatado una generación nueva de genios. [WIRED Business]
