Game Faces: Cliff Bleszinski
Cliffy B. Dude Huge. Or just Cliff Bleszinski. Whatever you call him, he's one of the closest things there is to a celebrity video game designer.
Game Faces: Ken Levine
Like most forms of media, video games are linear. They have a beginning and an end. But the path doesn't necessarily have to be a straight line. That's what makes video games unique.
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Melinda Gates & the birth control debate
More than 200 million women who don’t want to get pregnant lack access to contraceptives.
It's a stunning fact that has prompted Melinda Gates to action.
At the Women Deliver 2013 conference in Kuala Lumpur, I caught up with the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its goal is to get modern contraceptives to another 120 million women by year 2020.
Gates tells me that reframing the birth control debate is key. She says, "What we have to do is put the women and the girl at the center of this."
One in a million: The plight of Syria's refugees
The United Nations says more than one million Syrians are now refugees. That means nearly one out of every 22 citizens have fled for safety.
The news come as the country approaches the second anniversary of its civil war.
The U.N.'s refugee agency tweeted this picture after announcing the alarming new number. It says, "Meet Bushra, the millionth registered refugee from Syria."
The sign in her hands says, "One in a million." It's a reminder of the many, many others who share her desperate situation.
She also holds a small child. The U.N. says around half of the refugees are children. Most are under the age of eleven. It's hard to imagine the things they have seen and experienced in their young lives.
As Syria's deadly conflict grinds on, more and more people are making the difficult decision to seek shelter in another country. The UNHCR notes, "They arrive traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families."
The U.N. estimated there would be 1.1 million refugees by the end of June. But more than 400,000 Syrians have fled their homes since the start of 2013. And it's only March.
Chinese military accused of cyber espionage
A new report claims China's army is behind some of the world's most prolific computer hackers.
U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, Mandiant, says it tracked hacking activity to an area near Shanghai. Specifically, to a building used by a secret division of the Chinese military.
Mandiant calls the hacking group APT1. The report includes details about the methods used by APT1 to target its victims. It concludes the group operates with support from the Chinese government.
The company's vice president Grady Summers welcomed other researchers to scrutinize the data in the report. He said, "These accusations are not at all baseless. They are very well-rooted in fact, and very prudent actually."
China has questioned the evidence in the report. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also denied allegations of hacking. He argues that China is a frequent victim of cyberattacks originating from the United States.
Summers concedes that hacking happens from all corners of the Internet. But he says, "We're stating very clearly that this is asymmetric, that China is attacking the U.S. on a scale like we've never seen before."
Mandiant counted 141 victims of APT1 over six years. Of those, 115 were based in the United States.
Apple's results send shares tumbling
It's hard to imagine that the second-best quarterly profit ever made by a U.S. company wasn't good enough for investors.
But Apple isn't an ordinary company. And signs that the tech giant's unbelievable growth might be slowing is enough for investors to flee the stock. FULL POST
Battling the food crisis in Syria
Ongoing violence and shelling - just one of many challenges facing the World Food Programme in Syria.
"Our food trucks have been attacked, we've seen rising number of attacks on trucks in various areas in the country,"Â WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin tells me.
"The reality is we have conversations with everyone - the opposition side and the regime side to ensure that everyone recognizes we are not favoring one community over the other. Our goal is that we get assistance to every community."
Coca-Cola: Anti-Obesity Crusader?
Play a game of word association and there's fat chance (pun entirely intended) you'd pair "Coca-Cola" with "healthy". Perhaps that's exactly why the world's most valuable brand is pumping millions of ad dollars into convincing us it cares about our bodies.
Looking back at 2012
Technology isn't just part of News Stream, it's also something we love to cover.
So when we were asked to put together a special edition of the show with the top tech stories of the year, it was both very easy to pick the stories we thought were important... and very hard to leave out stories we loved but just couldn't fit.
You can watch the whole show here, divided into six parts.
PART 1: Breaking down the smartphone Patent Wars with The Verge's Nilay Patel; Microsoft launches Windows 8
Why I love my Raspberry Pi
My name was on the waiting list for the first batch of Raspberry Pi machines long before I traveled to Cambridge to meet Eben Upton.
Something about the tiny computer sent me back to my childhood days. It could plug into your TV, it could use the same programming language that I used in primary school. It was all very retro.
Only after I got my hands on one did I realize how useful the little thing actually is. At first I was excited about using it as an introduction to Linux and to refresh my dormant programming skills. It was only after I put some media software on it that it really became part of the furniture. FULL POST
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