For as ubiquitous as connectivity has become and how reliant we've grown on it, the Internet is still a digital jungle where hackers easily steal sensitive information from the ill-equipped and where the iron-fisted tactics of totalitarian regimes bent on controlling what their subjects can access are common. So instead of mucking around in public networks, just avoid them. Use a VPN instead. Read More >>

Global recorded music revenues grew .3-per cent to £10.9 billion last year, marking the first increase since 1999. That's the year, you'll remember, that Napster and file sharing brought the industry to its knees. Read More >>

Every day, scientists make discoveries that change the way we live. But sometimes, just sometimes, they achieve results that are so extraordinary or unexpected that they literally don't know what to do with them. Here are five of the most puzzling. Read More >>

Next time you whinge about your slow-arse internet, spare a thought for a bunch of British farmers who have had to build, test, and install their own fibre network this year — from scratch. Read More >>

In January 2012 scientists around the world halted research on engineered avian flu viruses over concerns that the work was too dangerous. Now, those scientists are taking to labs once more to continue their work. Read More >>

Scientists from the European Bioinformatics Institute are squeezing unparalleled amounts of data in to synthetic DNA, and now they've achieved something absolutely amazing: they can store 2.2 petabytes of information in a single gram of DNA, and recover it with 100 per cent accuracy. Read More >>

Japan has quite had its fill of nuclear power, thank you very much. As the country rebuilds from the devastating 2011 tsunami and subsequent Daiichi power plant disaster, it's looking toward alternate energy sources. Good call, minna-san. Read More >>

The truly lazy are often the most creative. Like this developer, who was caught outsourcing his entire job to China so that he could spend his time at work... not working. Read More >>

The recent school shooting in Newtown, CT is proving a watershed moment for American gun control efforts—public opinion is quickly coalescing in favour of stringent regulation proposals while civic leaders scramble to respond to the outcry. But fear not New Yorkers, the NYPD has a plan—wait for potential killers to mention their murderous intentions on Facebook. Read More >>

When you pay to use a computer, you don't expect it to be tracking your each and every digital move as a result. But that's exactly what happened to Aaron's Sale and Leasing customers — who had their rental computers snooped on in incredible detail. Read More >>

A team of forensic researchers from the Metropolitan Police in London, claim to be able to accurately timestamp any audio recording—using just the background electrical hum present in any digital recording. Read More >>

Twitter users who have taken the time to set up Tweeting-by-SMS are putting themselves at risk of attacks where anybody can post to their account, according to a team of security researchers. Read More >>

A team of scientists is claiming to have achieved the seemingly impossible: it's managed to create a nanoscale device which allows light to travel infinitely fast. But how the hell did they do it, and what does it mean? Read More >>

Everyone thinks it would be cool to travel at the speed of light, which is why scientists devote their lives to working out if it would be possible and NASA is trying to develop its own warp drive. But easy, tiger: turns out super-fast space travel would be fatal. Read More >>

The placebo effect seems to make little sense: get ill, take a dummy pill, and you'll recover in much the same way as someone taking real drugs. While there have been many theories bandied about over the years to explain how it works, new evidence suggests that it may be genetic. Read More >>