Washington state?s Mount St. Helens volcano explodes in a cataclysm that pulverizes its top 1,300 feet, deforests nearby valleys, sends ash 12 miles into the air and kills 57 people.

Steve Crocker was there when the internet was born. The date was October 29, 1969, and the place was the University of California, Los Angeles. Crocker was among a small group of UCLA researchers who sent the first message between the first two nodes of the ARPAnet, the US Department of Defense?funded network that eventually morphed into the modern internet.

Shaun Pendergast was working away at his Portland apartment when he heard a strange noise. He walked to the window and saw two raccoons expressing their love for each other on his roof.

Battleship starts like Top Gun, morphs into Transformers and ultimately ends up somewhere in the neighborhood of Independence Day.

The Fisker Atlantic ? the compact follow-up to the high-style Karma ? debuted early last month to a fair amount of fanfare as early adopters heralded the new range-extended EV as more proof that affordable electrics are on their way. But according to leaked investor documents secured by InsideEVs, the Atlantic won't go on sale ...

Before diverting your child's college savings fund to invest in Facebook stock, read our take on the biggest "liquidity event" of the social-media era

The aptly-named "RoBoat" has been taking home the World Robotic Sailing Championship (WRSC) crown for three years, but this July the team behind the world's winningest autonomous watercraft will attempt to snag another record for the longest robotic sailing expedition. The Austrian Society for Innovative Computer Sciences (INNOC) has been tweaking and iterating the RoBoat since ...

Al and Al tackle the story of the English computer scientist after realizing they are in love with their computers. The filmmakers talk about their upcoming movie, The Creator, and Turing's lasting impact on culture.

*I don't have to believe it to admire it, folks. http://smartdisorganized.blogspot.com/2012/02/spimescript.html (...) "So, I want to return to one part of that 2006 presentation which I still find relevant - the formation of Spime Script. We're entering a phase where hardware will become increasingly as malleable as software which leads to a problem of choice - if I ...

Facebook's got it all -- 845 million users, a $104 billion valuation, blackmail-worthy pics of everyone born in the '90s, and a screen-printing studio. Yup, that's right, the social-media behemoth houses a basement art studio, the Analog Research Lab, where designers Ben Barry and Everett Katigbak churn out hand-screened posters that go up all over Facebook's 36 global offices.

Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

Here is one version of Craig Venter's life story where he would've been a dutiful scientist at the National Institutes of Health, a respected yet anonymous researcher in genetics, perhaps. Thankfully, Venter saw that story line developing—and set about making sure it never happened. Instead, in 1992 Venter left the NIH to head the nonprofit Institute ...

Meg Whitman doesn't want to get rid of Hewlett-Packard's PC group, but that doesn't mean she's above making some cuts. According to a pair of anonymously sourced reports, Whitman is planning to announce some big layoffs -- perhaps between 8 and 15 percent of the workforce -- when she announces the company's quarterly financial results next Wednesday.

The HTC One X is one of the best smartphones on the market, and the best Android phone you can buy right now, period.

Donna Summer, the disco queen whose 1977 smash hit "I Feel Love" was nothing short of seismic in its impact on electronic music, died Thursday of cancer at the age of 63.

Steve Jobs had dreamed of one day taking Apple onto our public roadways with a sleek, well-designed car -- so said J.Crew CEO and Apple board member Mickey Drexler at a recent business conference.

What do the Nike+ FuelBand, the Boxee Box and the Xbox 360 have in common? All were all given a boost by Astro Studios a San Francisco-based design firm you may not have heard of.

Detroit eyes new fuel technologies being developed for tanks

A researcher with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, who also served as a consultant on the $200 million movie based on a board game, talks about how Battleship's alien encounter squares with reality.

Ross Levinsohn, the fifth CEO in four years, has a mixed record