Update: Offer is now closed. Apparently, a lot of Gizmodeans were interested in a free mag.

In honour of the topic of Wired’s May issue—Mystery—I will try not to reveal too much about it. Maybe just enough to explain to you why you shouldn’t miss reading it. [Wired]

The issue itself was formed, I’d guess, from the time Chris Anderson, Wired editor, saw JJ Abrams speak at TED about his mystery box. I was happy to have been able to contribute a small idea used in the TEST section, executed by Chris Hardwick, on snake oil gadgets. I got this idea from my mum and some of lisa’s relatives who use plenty of these new age devices, supposedly able to heal miraculously and transform the “vibrational energy” of water, and clean bad EM out of the air without stopping your Wi-fi or mobile phone from working. I thought that this is the kind of technology the Dharma institute would have been testing in Lost, and so it became very clear to me that this is exactly the kind of thing that would fit in the magazine.

I also love the theme because mystery is another aspect of Gizmodo that separates us from traditional tech journalism. We don’t bury our ledes, but its very clear that Rumors—stories before facts— are indeed one of the most tantalising and popular pieces of writing that we do. Because knowing is often not as powerful as longing or wishing for the unknown and unconfirmed.

Mike Elgan, former editor-in-chief for Windows Magazine, writes a great column on how gadgets blogs fail readers. It’s solid feedback and tough love. Here’s my list on why Tech Magazines are failing readers:

1) Too Slow: Most Computer magazines will write reviews of product you’ve already bought or read about on blogs 2 months before. With the exception of Laptop Mag and a few others. How are they catching up in speed? Surprise: blogs.

2) They sometimes ignore the things companies want you to ignore: Magazines need to cover the unofficial topics that are important, even if it involves illegal activity like IP theft. Like BitTorrent. Even if the sponsoring companies don’t agree with how the technology is used, its important to educate the public and industry to its benefits and problems. And rumours are clearly useful to warn people not to buy the stuff that’s just about to become outdated. Without news that corporations don’t sanction, magazines might as well reprint press releases.

3) They charge: So much info on the web is free and ad subsidised, including the blogs. They’ve got ads. So why are they still charging when its costing them readership? The magazine model of getting people to pay for copies is dying a slow death. See: The difference in subscription and cover prices and Chris Anderson’s Free.

4) The websites sometimes suck: In the worst cases, you can’t tell where the new content is. It’s all over the place, nested in a field of links that mean nothing to anyone but advertisers and industry wonks. In the best cases, they make you click through 10 times for every feature: Come on. Pageviews are a dead competitive metric, and you’re just annoying everyone.

5) Their columns are written by people I can’t relate to: The most prestigious print columnists today are at least a decade away from 35. The age is not the issue — but there are economic, social and generational gaps that can’t be bridged.

6) They cover a whole lot of stuff no one cares about: Just because a company puts something out or writes a press release, and it’s on a publication’s beat, doesn’t mean anyone actually cares about it. Market share is not indicative of success. Porsche sells fewer cars than Toyota. More tech journalists should learn to follow their gut instincts, because as tech lovers, you get a great sense of what people are also excited about.

7) They review products without the bigger picture: Most trade mags do a fantastic job of explaining the specs and the benchmark results, without the overall real world effect (usually a small delta of improvement) and social context (see: iPod shuffle’s tiny buttons). Most tech pubs fail at this, blog or mag. Exception: The big columnists at the papers do a great job of this, especially the four horsemen, Pogue, Moss, Levy, and Baig.

8) They presume to be error-free: Last year, right before I canceled my subscription, I read a computer trade with more errors than I’d seen in any magazine. It included type-Os, but also factual F-ups like mention of “Pioneer LCDs TVs”. (Pioneer doesn’t make them here.) Magazines have copy editors, fact checkers and 2 months to deliver this content. And you can’t retract paper.

9) The writing is often boring: OK, not every article has to be funny or Shakespeare, but it shouldn’t make you want to tear your eyes out or go to sleep, either. Tech is inherently a left brain topic; making it an easy and enjoyable thing to learn about and digest is critical and something many trade pubs fail to do! This is increasingly critical as tech and gadgets go more and more mainstream and the average joe comes looking for information.

10) They fail to realise news is collaborative: Mike criticized the gadget blogs for rehashing reviews. First off, aggregation is a service. If someone can check one site, instead of 400, that’s useful. This attitude also seems to ignore the fact that news is collaborative. Sites send each other tips and in return, send links and readers back to the source. That’s how we give credit to our peers online and grow together, as a network. You can’t do that in print.

Bonus 11) Paper: They kill trees and give you papercuts. They cost money to mail. They are heavy and take up space. And they can catch on fire and burn your entire house down! And after all these years, the subscription cards are still annoying. And you can’t search through old print as easily as you can search through old online content.

[image by Mannobhai]

Yeah, that guy is back in the news again, currently on trial. After locking his daughter in a secret, electronically sealed basement for 24 years, turning her into a sex slave, and fathering children with her (bleck), Fritzl finally pleaded guilty to charges of imprisonment and murder, among others. today in the third day of his trial. Fritzl is facing a sentence of 10 to life. Good riddance. [Reuters]

The backstory:

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was arrested for heading a ring of Italian thieves. They were accused of breaking into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Centre and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewellery, and other spoils. The vault was thought to be impenetrable. It was protected by 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations. The robbery was called the heist of the century, and even now the police can’t explain exactly how it was done.

Josh’s meeting with Notarbartolo:

Notarbartolo sits down across from me at one of the visiting room’s two dozen small rectangular tables. He has an intimidating reputation. The Italian anti-Mafia police contend he is tied to the Sicilian mob, that his cousin was tapped to be the next the capo dei capi-the head of the entire organisation. Notarbartolo intends to set the record straight. He puts his hands on the table. He has had six years to think about what he is about to say.

“I may be a thief and a liar,” he says in beguiling Italian-accented French. “But I am going to tell you a true story.”

The Cops:

Peys and De Bruycker lead the Diamond Squad, the world’s only specialised diamond police. Their beat: the labyrinthine Antwerp Diamond District. Eighty percent of the world’s rough diamonds pass through this three-square-block area, which is under 24-hour police surveillance and monitored by 63 video cameras. About $3 billion worth of gem sales were reported here in 2003, but that’s not counting a hidden world of handshake deals and off-ledger transactions. Business relationships follow the ancient family and religious traditions of the district’s dominant Jewish and Indian dealers, known as diamantaires. In 2000, the Belgian government realised it would require a special type of cop to keep an eye on things and formed the squad. Peys and De Bruycker were the first hires.

De Bruycker called headquarters, asking for a nationwide alert: The Antwerp Diamond Centre had been brazenly robbed. Then he dialed Securilink, the vault’s alarm company.

“What is the status of the alarm?” he asked.

“Fully functional,” the operator said, checking the signals coming in from the Diamond Centre. “The vault is secure.”

“Then how is it that the door is wide open and I’m standing inside the vault?” De Bruycker demanded, glancing at the devastation all around him.

The Safe:

The Door
1. Combination dial (0-99)
2. Keyed lock
3. Seismic sensor (built-in)
4. Locked steel grate
5. Magnetic sensor
6. External security camera

The Vault
7. Keypad for disarming sensors
8. Light sensor
9. Internal security camera
10. Heat/motion sensor (approximate location)

The story goes into the exact detail on how they got around all the various security measures. Amazingly, no one found the security breach til the weekend was over, but by then, the thieves were long gone. They would have made it, too, if not for one slip up on the side of the road. Read on. [The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist]

*Tip of the hat to the unsung heroes, Josh’s editor, Mark Robinson, and all the designers, photographers and top editors and fact checkers on this one.

The following is a retelling of an excellent—but far less judgmental—BBC News story:

Step 1: Two Belgian hackers show up at the Sumitomo Mitsui bank reception desk in London on Sept. 16, 2006, and asked for the bank’s security chief, a Mr. O’Donoghue. ERROR: They were caught on closed-circuit camera, not just talking to but joking around with O’Donoghue, who even showed the two to a freakin’ secure terminal.

Step 2: The so-called hackers used a USB key to log keystrokes on that terminal, and returned to retrieve the keystrokes—usernames and passwords of employees—themselves. ERROR: They had to return in person. O’Donoghue decided to cover the Belgians tracks by cutting wires to CCTV cams, and even “enquired about creating extra access badges.”

Step 3: On Friday, October 1, they showed up and used the logins to attempt 10 cash transfers to accounts in Spain, Dubai, Hong Kong, Turkey and Israel. ERROR: They never actually learned how to fill out transfer forms, so the transfers didn’t go through. (Also, they chose countries that sounded like Bond film locations, and they chose a target—Nomura Holdings—that sounded like the company Hans Gruber tried to rob in Die Hard.)

Step 4: Having failed, they went back again on Saturday. ERROR: They went back again on Saturday.

Step 5: On Monday, when the bank managers noticed around $US320 million in failed bank transfers, they alerted authorities, who quickly zeroed in on, you guessed it, Security Chief O’Donoghue. ERROR: O’Donoghue should never have come back to work. Also, $US320 million? Didn’t they know about rounding up pennies?

Although the case against O’Donoghue and the Belgians seems open and shut, there’s a lot more to this tale, including a dapper “self-styled lord of the manor” named Hugh Rodley, a money-laundering porn-shop owner named David Nash and a mysterious Swedish dame by the name of Inger Britt Marie Malmros. I am not making any of this up.

Please go to the BBC and read more—there’s even a video. [BBC News]

Apparently some weaves are tighter than others. (Apparently, some relationships are tighter than others too.) After 20-year-old Briana Bonds told her boyfriend Juan she didn’t love him anymore, the a-hole shot up the back of her mid-’90s Pontiac. The rear windshield was shattered, but she was still alive and without major injury, possibly thanks to that weave.

The ladies down at the beauty parlor are not totally convinced, though. Scientifically speaking, the weft (where the weave meets the hair) is where the fibers are interlocked most tightly. But whether or not that makes it any where close to the equivalent of a Kevlar mesh is beyond current beauty-parlor technology to ascertain.

Hair stylist Kim Walton told Kansas City NBC affiliate KSHB, “I never heard of weaves saving anybody’s life.” Still, if it turned out to be what saved Bonds, she added, “Thank God for weave.”

Bonds herself told the news channel that it was more about God than the weave: “I think God was in my passenger seat.” As of Thursday, Bonds had a headache; no word on what happened to that dick Juan. [WOAI via Geekologie]