Auckland Island’s Pesky Pigs Now Cash Cows
Auckland Island was – and still is – home to pigs, initially introduced in the first half of the 19th century by European hunters and explorers, as well as a group of Indigenous New…
Tag Archives: Wired
Allbirds and Adidas Make Planet-First Running Shoe
“Competition between running shoe brands is never-ending. Successful products don’t just boost profit margins, they help win medals, too,” tech reviewer Kieran Alger reports for Wired. “This new, shared – and frankly formidable –…
New Zealand’s Emphatic Covid-19 Approach
“In New Zealand, investigators traced an outbreak to a 50-second window of exposure. The case might be a lesson for countries contemplating a future with no Covid-19,” WIRED’s science editor Matt Reynolds reports. “Authorities investigating…
Simon Denny Exhibits Amazon Cage in San Francisco
A new exhibit at San Francisco’s de Young Museum explores what it means to be human in an AI-saturated world with pieces like New Zealand artist Simon Denny’s work, “Amazon worker cage patent drawing…
Denis Smith Living on Images of Liquid Light
A decade ago, New Zealander Denis Smith was working in Auckland and living the high life. “I was killing myself working, trying to sustain lifestyle,” he says to Wired journalist Michael Hardy. “It developed…
Your Apples May Soon Be Picked By Laser-Shooting Robots
Roboticists are creating crop-specific machines to harvest fruits and veggies. One of these inventions is “the apple-picking robot, a metallic farmer that just graduated from R&D and won a job in a New Zealand…
Why the Tech Elite Love New Zealand
This year, Rocket Lab plans to blast a 56-foot vehicle into orbit on a mission to revolutionize access to space. The rocket “was manufactured in Auckland and will launch from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula,”…
New Zealand Film Team Transforms London
The bestselling book by Peter Reeve, Mortal Engines, is now being adapted for film by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, with visual effects specialist New Zealander Christian Rivers directing the project and…
Insane View of Milky Way from Edge of NZ
The South Island spans 50,437sqkm of breathtaking, verdant terrain. But nothing on the ground surpasses what’s in the sky. The region is home to the largest dark sky observatory in the world, glittering with…
New Zealand, the Kardashians, and the Battle to Control Manuka Honey
“Kourtney Kardashian hawks its health benefits. Counterfeiters and chemists labor to unlock its molecular secrets. And now it’s at the center of an international branding war,” writes Ellen Airhart in an article for
AllBird’s Merino Trainers Wow WIRED
AllBird’s new Wool Runners are the brainchild of Tim Brown, 35, a native New Zealander and former All White. And according to WIRED magazine – which rates the sneaker 9/10 – they are “understated”,…
Thor director Taika Waititi an Indie Powerhouse
“As a director, got an impeccable ability to balance painful earnestness with biting humour,” Angela Watercutter writes for WIRED. “And as a comedy writer and actor, he produces jokes that land…
Amos Chapple Couldn’t Resist Shooting in the Coldest Place on Earth
New Zealand photographer Amos Chapple says he shoots travel photos aimed at the news sections of papers and which need a headline to hang a story on. It got down to -31 degrees Centigrade…
Expert Hacker Debugging the World’s Software
One of Google’s “secret team of bug-hunting hackers” is New Zealander Ben Hawkes. Part of the group known as Project Zero, a group of top Google security researchers with the sole mission of tracking…
Former Hacker Keeping Secrets Safe at First Look
For the last month, 34-year-old former Aucklander Morgan Marquis-Boire has been the director of security for startup First Look Media, a website that has become the most prolific publisher of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s…
Glassholes Switched off with Google Glass Detector
Julian Oliver, a New Zealand artist living in Berlin, is cutting off people accessing Wi-Fi with Google Glass with his new detector, reports WIRED magazine. Oliver has written a simple program called Glasshole.sh that detects…
New Zealand’s Meteorites a Worthy Subject
Fine art photographer Casey Moore travels the world documenting meteorites using his large-format Sinar camera, with much of his work centring around reconnecting with New Zealand, his country of origin. In the course of his…
Sun City Poms Ageing Gracefully in Vivid Colour
When New Zealand-born advertising and fine art photographer Todd Antony was shooting landscapes in the southwestern United States in 2009 he came upon Sun City, Arizona, a desert retirement community of approximately…
New Zealanders Fight to Pull Back Kakapo from Extinction
7 March 2014 – New Zealanders are pulling out all the stops to save the nation’s second most favourite bird, the kakapo – a friendly, flightless, green feathered parrot that teeters on…
Plans for Icy Demonstration Flight South
Air New Zealand is planning a demonstration Boeing 767 flight to Antarctica on 5 October, and if all goes well the airline is expected to operate two more chartered flights to “the ice” later…
Domestic Spy Stories Unfolding
“One of Kim Dotcom’s lasting legacies in New Zealand – beyond his already-legendary arrest, like something out of a film – is that the government may change the law to make it easier to…
Air New Zealand’s Skycouches Pass ‘GeekDad’ Test
Andy Robertson is the self-styled ‘Chief GeekDad’ of UK Wired magazine. Recently, he put Air New Zealand’s innovative Skycouch technology to the ‘geek’ test, flying from the UK to New Zealand with his young…
Strange Volcanic Goings-On
A peculiar lava spine between 20 and 30m across has appeared in the crater of White Island. Wired’s Eric Klemetti is “not even sure how to describe it.” “The lava forming it has to…
Insight into Dotcom
“Across an ocean, hours before Operation Takedown began, the US Department of Justice had already tipped off a select group of journalists about the raid’s planned highlights. If you know nothing else about Kim…
Swimming By the Stars
An eight-year University of Canterbury-led study that tracked humpback whale migrations by satellite shows the huge mammals follow uncannily straight paths for weeks at a time. Humpbacks use a combination of the sun’s position,…
Sound from all sides
New Zealand musician and ribbon-microphone enthusiast Larry Killip has helped introduce Chinese microphones to the English-speaking market. In 23 he discovered a new line of cheap Chinese ribbon microphones that were easy for hobbyists…
In Sheep Code
New Zealand clothing label Icebreaker is enabling its customers to trace their purchased merino garment back to one of the 120 sheep stations where the fibre was grown by entering the individual ‘Baacode’ number…
Kong is coming
Wired magazine’s October issue features a lavish 16-page look at Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong, due to hit cinemas this December. Wired examines the greatly anticipated film through an…
Kiwi Stonehenge
June 5 saw the opening of NZ’s very own Stonehenge, erected in the Wairarapa by the Phoenix Astronomical Society. More than simply a replica of its northern predecessor, the Kiwi henge is a celestial calendar of the…
Seeds of Discontent
The controversial lifting of a 2-year moratorium on genetically modified crop trials in NZ has been covered extensively by the Guardian, BBC, and Wired. The issue is a divisive one in a country reliant…
Aquada, Bond Aquada, 0064
International media attention was lavished on The Thames, London, for the launch of NZ-entrepreneur Alan Gibb’s revolutionary Aquada (inspired by inventor Terry Roycroft’s design innovations). The James Bond-style sports vehicle with the amphibian edge can reach up to…
Bright Sparks and Smart Studs
A NZ company working in conjunction with Auckland University is set to revolutionise road safety technology. Harding Traffic Systems has developed battery-powered “smart studs” to replace the cat’s eyes currently marking roads around the world. The…
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
NZer David J. Stevenson – a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology – has a project up his sleeve straight out of science fiction, but grounded in the search for science fact. Stevenson’s proposal – outlined…
Lord of FX
Wired profiles Stephen Regelous, the Wellingtonian behind The Two Towers‘ jaw-dropping battle scenes. Regelous created a program – Massive – which would supply “smart crowds” to supplement the on-screen action. Each agent has an individual brain, with…
Counted the Neighbours Yet?
Statistics New Zealand is making census data available online free of charge. Formerly $3,300 to $25,000 for special software, now users can simply transfer data and use their own software. The US, UK and…
The Native Post
Connected to Congo at 56000 bps, former NZ TV reporter Moana Sinclair has been hired by the UN to coordinate the newly-formed Indigenous Media Network, largely linked via the web. Her experience overcoming obstacles and achieving mainstream success reinforces her…
Kiwis: Our Sheep Don’t Stink
The No.8 gene gets Wired for the 21st Century: “With about 45 million sheep and only 5 million people, New Zealanders hear their fair share of sheep jokes. When it comes to biotechnology and sheep, however,…
Kiwi “Who Was Who” Goes Online
A fantastic resource for exploring over 3000 NZer’s who have ‘made their mark’ on our history. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography puts the entire contents of the previous print Dictionary of New Zealand Biography…
Coal Ignites NZ Dinosaur Theory
Scientists think coal from the West Coast of New Zealand provides new evidence that an asteroid caused the extinction of dinosaurs.
A Wired Army
The NZ Army is the first in the world to recruit online, and expects to cut the process from 4 to 6 weeks to just 14 days. “If we can offer a way that is faster,…
School Shooting Stopped?
“Crime fighters can score one for the Internet, thanks to a heads-up play by a New Zealand teenager who may have exposed a school shooting plot.”
Dolly, the Next Generation
PPL Therapeutic, the company behind Dolly and the cloned piglets, seeks backing to buy a farm in New Zealand. If all goes to plan, Dolly#2 will be a good kiwi girl.
Breaking in Privacy?
Will new anti-hacking laws breach the bill of rights? Parliament tries to walk the tightrope between security and invasion.
Happily.Married
Wellingtonians Rob and Liz Flavhive.Hill say ditch the hyphen – the dot is so much more 2001.
Old Birds
Entering into the debate over cloning, Dr. Alan Cooper of Oxford comments that, despite the moa-mapping efforts of his team, “it is crucial that we do not become complacent and start assuming that we will be…
Ice Ice Baby
Extreme sport doesn’t come any cooler: -10º, ice bergs and hurricane-strength winds face three New Zealanders kayaking around the Antarctic peninsula.
Over and Out
“After six months and more than 400 bidding rounds, the battle for New Zealand’s third-generation mobile radio spectrum is over, netting the Government over $51 million.”
Escape from Middle Earth
With a $100 000 budget and all the glamour Wellington could muster, the Rings wrap party was like “something straight out of Tolkien”.
Whistle-blowing
After ten years of play on an unregulated field, an umpire has been appointed for the New Zealand telecommunications industry.
3G in 3rd M?
The auction of New Zealand’s 3G radio spectrum frequencies has been an on-again, off-again affair – will it take till the third millennium?
E-tax
IRD sets a dodgy precedent, requiring Dominz to hand over personal details linked to all .NZ domain names.
Security or Spying?
Activist Nicky Hager sees proposed anti-hacking laws as spying – Minister Paul Swain defends them as essential cyber-security.
Clean Green Methane
While some countries battle automobile emissions, New Zealand scientists at the Rumen Microbiology Unit, Palmerston North, are working on producing a gas-less sheep. It’s a tricky business though: “There’s no point in getting rid of the methane…
Frankenfood
New Zealand’s Royal Commission on Genetic Engineering is being watched closely as the first chance for citizens of any country to say what they think about Frankenfood.
NZ 3-D LCD
Images on your monitor create the illusion of depth, but remain flat. Now a Kiwi company, Deep Video Imaging, has created a new kind of double-skinned monitor which delivers true depth of field and allows the display…
Virtual Hobbits
“In a nondescript suburb of New Zealand’s capital, the team at Weta Digital, an offshoot of Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films, is producing more than 1,200 visual effect shots for the three Lord of…
