Kurt DelBene (left) and Satya Nadella (right): The men behind Microsoft's push into the heavens. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired

People keep asking Kurt DelBene if Microsoft is serious about cloud computing.

DelBene is the man in charge of Microsoft’s Office division and one of five division heads who report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, so he’s the right person to ask. But he finds the question a bit perplexing.

“We’re as serious about the cloud as we are about evolving our businesses,” he says, nodding to the man beside him, Satya Nadella, who runs Redmond’s Server and Tools division. “We always look...

Hunting spiders can not only watch your every move, but they can feel those moves, and that of their prey, through the air.

How their tiny specialized hairs do it has puzzled researchers for decades, but one team of scientists may have found a break. Their physics-focused work suggests each hair acts like a single, independent ear — not a network of ear parts that, together, turn a spider’s exoskeleton into one giant ear, as was previously assumed.

“Nobody had looked at these hairs in just the right way. When you look at what they are mechanically optimized to do, you could design b...