WHISTLER, British Columbia — When the best speed skiers in the world take to the slopes for the men’s downhill, it’s not just their bodies and their minds that are honed to a razor’s edge. Their skis will be as well. The selection, setup, care, and preparation of a set of world-class downhill racing skis is an intricate blend of art and science, practiced by a group of almost exclusively European technicians in what are called the wax cabins here.

Microsoft on Monday announced its latest mobile operating system at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain.

LONG Beach, California — Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson announces at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that the publication would be releasing its content for the iPad by summer.

The famous Magnum photo archive, including prints from seminal talent such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Ernst Haas and Eve Arnold, finds a new home in Texas.

A new high-resolution image of an odd-shaped nebula 2,000 light-years away reveals that it's been created by a very young, very massive star.

The TED talk is a unique form: 18 minutes to win over an audience which has already seen it all. Stephen Wolfram gets a standing ovation, an honor not lightly given. He frames the arc of his work from the point of view of his own discovery of how complicated things grow from simple rules and quickly compresses decades of work into a few minutes.

Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili gets killed on a training run.

Google founder Sergey Brin tells the TED conference that the company is trying to find a way to work within the system .. and stay in China.

Cash in on the retro fad, attract younger buyers, earn green cred. Win!

Johnny Depp talks up his Mad Hatter character in a new Alice in Wonderland clip.

In the first case of its kind, a U.S. comic collector is being sentenced to six months in prison for possessing "obscene" manga books depicting child sex and bestiality.

Scientists are studying slime molds that have amazing abilities to work together for clues to the underlying laws of networks.

Producer Lawrence Bender, who debuted An Inconvenient Truth at TED four years ago, is at it again this year with Countdown to Zero, which aims to put the campaign against nuclear proliferation on the top of the world's agenda.

Google's new social networking tool Buzz has the tech world buzzing over its features, potential usefulness and its threat to Facebook. Wired.com readers weigh on the best and worst of Buzz in this interactive widget.

Presidents Washington and Lincoln skip the State of the Union and instead tell us about the state of personal technology. they review the Stihl chainsaw, Sonicare FlexCare toothbrush and a bullet-resistant helmet.

After 14 years of promising “the American people their first light saber,” the Missile Defense Agency finally pulls it off.

A credit card hacker is sentenced to 13 years in prison for stealing nearly 2 million credit card numbers. Max Vision's term is the longest ever imposed on a U.S. hacker.

Google argues in a staunch and sometimes eloquent brief that an agreement reached with the Authors Guild to digitize millions of books is legal and a contribution to human knowledge.

Those who expected the iPad to be more about content than hardware were a tad disappointed with the unveiling last month. But the good thing about a two-month wait is that deals can close, just in time. The latest in the never-ending rumor mill: Apple has convinced TV studios to sell episodes for $1, half the current iTunes rate.

In Patrick Boivin's twisted videos, Iron Man squares off against Bruce Lee and The Joker challenges Batman to a break-dancing contest. Now the DIY director is taking a shot at the movie biz.

Many Americans are asking: How'd Haiti get the way that it is? A prominent Haitian historian explains how the nation's infrastructure got built (or didn't).