I t’s hard to imagine an encryption machine more sophisticated than the human brain. This three-pound blob of tissue holds an estimated 86 billion neurons, cells that rapidly fire electrical pulses in split-second response to whatever stimuli our bodies encounter in the external environment. Each…

White and silent, death is undoing everything. For years, the 20 or so families in the tiny riverside settlement had lived hard yet improving lives, clearing the forest around them, fishing the waters, planting crops and building houses. Birth by birth, the population grew. From time to time,…

Buildings are seen through thick haze in the central business district of Guangzhou, part of the Pearl River Delta urban area.Photograph: Alex Lee/Reuters China’s Pearl River Delta has overtaken Tokyo to become the world’s largest urban area in both size and population, according to a report from…

Image: Georgia Tech Ever since Edward Snowden released documents outlining government overwatch of the internet, security pundits have insisted the only way to ensure privacy, anonymity, and security when using computers is to unplug them (air-gap) from any kind of network infrastructure, especially…

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a methodology that uses electromagnetic (EM) side-channel signals to attack a computer , regardless of whether or not it’s been air-gapped. In their research paper , Robert Callan, Alenka Zajic, and Milos Prvulovic discuss that their…

I t’s hard to imagine an encryption machine more sophisticated than the human brain. This three-pound blob of tissue holds an estimated 86 billion neurons, cells that rapidly fire electrical pulses in split-second response to whatever stimuli our bodies encounter in the external environment. Each…

D uring the last months of my mother’s life, as she ventured further from lucidity, she was visited by music. In collusion with her dementia, her hearing loss filled her consciousness with musical hallucinations. Sometimes welcome, more often not, her musical visitations were vivid, yet segmented…

But that's wrong. The real story behind the 2014 outbreak isn't on the West Coast. It's in Ohio Amish country, where a missionary returning from the Philippines turned an otherwise unremarkable year for this virus into one of the worst in recent history. That's where Jacqueline Fletcher, the public…

When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private." The...

Ross Ulbricht. Courtesy Ulbricht Family For its two and a half years online, thousands of drug dealers sold every kind of narcotic imaginable on the anonymous online marketplace known as the Silk Road. But put one of the site’s heroin dealers in a courtroom and ask him questions under oath, and the…

Virginia Hughes Jan 26, 2015 What if you could sleep 50 hours straight and still never feel truly awake? Welcome to the bizarre, distressing, and totally exhausting world of the hypersomniac. By Virginia Hughes For most teenagers, getting out of bed in the morning is a drag. But when Lloyd Johnson…

Aaron Foss gave the FCC a list of all the robocall numbers his company blocked in 2014. It filled 25 boxes. courtesy Aaron Foss Aaron Foss won a $25,000 cash prize from the Federal Trade Commission for figuring out how eliminate all those annoying robocalls that dial into your phone from a world of…

A pumpjack in Texas. Image: Wikipedia. Researchers have for the first time provided strong evidence for what conspiracy theorists have long thought - oil is often the reason for interfering in another country's war. Throughout recent history, countries which need oil have found reasons to interfere…

To say I stood up and cheered as I finished reading Jon Chait’s new essay on the resurgence of a toxic political correctness on the left would be an understatement. There’s some great reporting in it that really helps put into context what the new guardians of the identity politics left are up to.…

Jan. 28, 2015 ,at 11:00 AM Filed under Signals You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should. As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler , which led to the creation of COBOL , a…

Op-Docs ‘Hotel 22’ In Silicon Valley, the region’s homeless use a 24-hour bus line as a shelter at night. When we think of Silicon Valley, we tend to imagine a world of extreme wealth and limitless opportunity. What we forget are the populations that have been displaced or neglected by the recent…

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Warren Farrell Photograph by Winni Wintermeyer On a balmy afternoon last June, dozens of demonstrators carrying “Stop the Violence” and “Rape is Rape” placards descended on the Hilton DoubleTree in downtown Detroit. They had come to…

Incidentally, once you read this you’ll no longer wonder why French presidents and ministers are sometimes greeted by protests when they visit former French colonies in Africa, even if the protests are about other issues. Though what other issues could be more important than this one we have no…

Brandie Connell waits with her son Cory, five, at the Food Bank of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.Photograph: James Robinson/Guardian Even as Barack Obama tours the country to promote his middle-class economic plan, American families increasingly need public assistance to help put…

Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say How the language police are perverting liberalism. Photographs by Bobby Doherty Around 2 a.m. on December 12, four students approached the apartment of Omar Mahmood, a Muslim student at the University of Michigan, who had recently published a column in a school newspaper…

​Tuesday, the federal government continued its offensive against default consumer encryption enabled by Apple and Google and anonymity tools like Tor, saying that greater privacy and security has created a "zone of lawlessness" that law enforcement is having trouble cracking. Leslie Caldwell, an…

The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force…

A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government agencies suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks can hijack the brain in ways that resemble addictions to nicotine and other drugs. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg…

A rendering of Hayabusa2 using its “horn” to gather materials from the crater it will make using an explosive-propelled projectile. In the lower right is MASCOT, a lander that will be left on the surface to carry out ongoing studies. Akihiro Ikeshita / JAXA F rom mythological tales to the…

Canada’s leading surveillance agency is monitoring millions of Internet users’ file downloads in a dragnet search to identify extremists, according to top-secret documents. The covert operation, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept , taps into Internet cables and…

Don’t believe the GOP’s sudden conversion to the open Internet. It’s part of a plan to make things even worse. Susan Crawford Jan 28, 2015 Unlisted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) headquarters peeks from behind the trees in Washington D.C. The phrase “dead on arrival” is getting a lot of use…

HONG KONG — The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign…

SUBSCRIBE to the OFFICIAL BBC YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2IXqEIn LAUNCH BBC iPlayer to access Live TV and Box Sets: https://bbc.in/2J18jYJ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo More about this episode: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pssgh We have an extraordinary relationship with dogs - closer than…

Along the western coast of England, under a half-moon hidden by clouds, a dark Audi sports car with fabricated plates followed an empty road toward a Barclays bank. Inside were five men, dressed all in black, and their gear: crowbars, power tools, coils of flexible tubing, and two large tanks of…

A Microsoft Research chief has said he thinks artificial intelligence systems could achieve consciousness, but has played down the threat to human life. Eric Horvitz's position contrasts with that of several other leading thinkers. Last December, Prof Stephen Hawking told the BBC that such machines…

Advertisement Photos: Matt Loeb Brain upgrade: Chelsey Loeb [top, with her parents] hopes her new brain implant will control her epileptic seizures. First, surgeons placed temporary electrodes in Loeb’s brain so doctors could monitor the electrical patterns associated with her seizures over the…

Kids are "digital natives." They grew up using computers, and therefore are more "tech savvy" than older people. Right? No! Well, the first part's right, but the second part is increasingly wrong. Ironically, with each passing year, young people entering the workforce know less and less about…

Douglas Adams dreamt up the Starship Titanic in 1982 as a half-page gag in Life, the Universe and Everything , the third book of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘trilogy in five parts.’ The luckless vessel served as a warning that ships powered by improbability drives run the risk of having…

A still from “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” a documentary about the singer and civil-rights icon Nina Simone. Credit Courtesy Sundance Institute On the opening night of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, two films, as usual, had their premières, gaining maximum exposure to reporters and critics.…

The construction site at Saint-Paul-lez-Durance: when the reactor building is complete, it will rise some 60 metres into the air and reach 10 metres below the ground. T he countryside of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance in Provence is a serene terrain of thickly wooded hills. On chilly January mornings, the…

Charles Koch: Bo Rader/ZUMA; David Koch: Sonia Moskowitz/ZUMA Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. $889 million. That’s how much Charles and David Koch’s political network hopes to spend on the presidential race, House and Senate contests, and other elections and policy…

Inequality on Campus Education is supposed to be America’s primary engine for social mobility, but growing economic inequality is vividly reflected in our nation’s top colleges. At the nation’s most selective 193 colleges and universities, affluent students (those from the richest socioeconomic…