Ones and Zeros: Death of the Pixel, the PS3 Syrian Rebel Tank and Endless Drone Strikes

Our weekly roundup of the ups and downs of this here Internet. See last week's here.

But Massachusetts also bests Japan and China, according to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In the end, trying to compare countries based on science tests is kind of silly.

The armored vehicle which was “100 percent made in Syria” and took only a “month of work” brings new meaning to the term first-person-shooter.

Belgian researchers have developed a spherical curved LCD display that can fit onto contact lenses.

And replace them with vectors.

In 10 years, we’ll be “fluent’ in every language thanks to instant translation software. Within 50, there will be an app for medical checkups. And by 2122, robots will have taken over the Olympics, predicts Popular Mechanics.

Not too shabby.

“Stifling red tape” and “legalized bribery” is killing U.S. competitiveness across areas like the automotive industry, intellectual property and telecom.

But reporting is “ very, very important.”

Just days after Australian police declared Apple Maps potentially “life threatening,” Google Maps is back in the App Store and within 7 hours became the marketplace’s most popular free app. Which makes sense because it’s that much better.

After recording his computer usage for over two years, Marcin Ignac created these series of visualizations: "Each line represents one day and each colorful block is the most foreground app running at the given moment. Black areas are periods when my computer is not turned on. Seeping patterns (or lack of them) and time of holidays and travel (longer gaps) can be therefore easily identified."

Doctors there are burning away part of the brain’s pleasure center in addicts to kill cravings.

According to Netflix’s November rankings. No surprise there. But if you don’t live in Kansas City, don’t hold your breath. Rolling out Google Fiber nationally could cost $140 billion.

For a graduate project, NYU student Josh Begley decided to tweet 10 years of U.S. drone strikes in 10 minutes. After 12 hours, he still wasn’t finished.

From this week's Reddit AMA: it turns out the ex-Wired editor-in-chief turned drone guru, and subject in our new doc, thinks that soon, we won't be calling our robots "robots," there's no Moore's Law of batteries, that Israel will win the first ever all-drone battle, and that Gang of Four still owns.