A new rearrangement of the animal kingdom has expanded a little-known offshoot into a major branch, and opened a gap between relatively simple and highly complex life.

Ocean-dwelling flatworms called acoelomorphs were thought to represent one of life’s early stages, bridging primitive animals with radially symmetrical bodies, like jellyfish and sea anemones, and animals with bilaterally symmetrical bodies, from butterflies to humans.

But acoelomorphs now appear related to Xenoturbella, a bilaterally symmetrical ocean worm.

“It was nice to have this intermediate group between jellyfish and the o...

Like a tiny, expensive, glowing pebble, the HP Veer is one small smartphone.

And it is: In a gadget season dominated by 4-inch and bigger smartphones, the webOS-based Veer looks positively petite. It feels like a small river rock in your hand, smooth and black and more pebble-like than any other recent phone. It should fit in a pants pocket as easily as a pocket knife, but without the TSA hassles.

Overall, it is about the size of a...

A Russian hacker convicted of the $9 million hack of RBS WorldPay has avoided jail and has been given only a suspended sentence.

Yevgeny Anikin, 27, received a suspended sentence of five years on Monday, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, after pleading guilty to what the U.S. has called “perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted.”

Anikin reportedly expressed remorse for his role in the caper, telling the court this week, “I want to say that I repent and fully admit my guilt.” He had been under house arrest since 2009 and reportedly bou...

Those wanting Patriot Act reforms should probably stop applauding the House’s inability Tuesday to block three key spy provisions in the law from expiring at month’s end.

That’s because the House took procedural steps Wednesday that virtually guarantee those provisions would be extended in an upcoming vote.

The reauthorization bill failed by seven votes Tuesday because it needed two-thirds backing.

But not any more.

It required two-thirds Tuesday because it was considered emergency legislation and did not go through the House Rules Committee ahead of the vote. But on Wednesday, the legislation...

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, released in 2010, will be the last game in the music game series for the foreseeable future, Activision said Wednesday.
Image courtesy Activision

Updated: Feb. 9, 2011; 5 p.m. PST

It’s game over for Guitar Hero.

Activision Blizzard will close its music-game business division, laying off hundreds of employees, and cancel the Guitar Hero game that was in development for 2011, the publisher said in a conference call Wednesday.

The drastic move comes after significant industrywide declines in the music game business. In 2007, Activision sold 1.5 million copies of Guitar...

By Liat Clark, Wired UK

Regional accents have been discovered in the songs of crested gibbons, our closest relatives after great apes.

The small apes (genus Nomascus) — found in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and southern China — were already known to communicate in species-specific song when defining territory or attracting mates. However, researchers from the German Primate Centre in Göttingen have discovered conclusive correlations between song structure, genetics and geography, answering questions surrounding the primates’ evolutionary development and migration patterns in the process.

Evolutionary...