dn27376-1_300[1].jpg From 2008 to 2010, the Moorea Biocode project set out to create a comprehensive database of all non-microbial life on a single Polynesian island. Five years on, a team of humanities students at the University of Pennsylvania have assembled their own, rather ironic Biocode confe...

dn27374-1_300[1].jpg Quantum computers should theoretically outpace ordinary ones, but attempts to build a speedy quantum machine have so far come up short. Now an approach based on a Victorian counting device seems to be getting close. This proto-quantum computer can only solve one problem. But th...

Screaming with rage at your dying cell phone battery doesn't help much, but that could be about to change. Researchers have developed a postage stamp-sized microphone that can harvest acoustic energy to top up your charge on the go. Zhong Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and hi...

dn27321-1_300[1].jpg One day last August, in the early hours of the morning, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Napa Valley, waking people all around California's famed wine region. Many were wearing fitness trackers. Once the quake was over, tracker company Jawbone gathered the data in a public gra...

Cybercrooks beware: Obama is coming for you. The US president declared a national state of emergency over cybercrime at the start of April, promising to use the "authorities of my office" to track down and punish malicious hackers that threaten the country. Unfortunately, it seems the plan may be do...

mg22630163.200-1_300[1].jpg A close look at ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts is giving us an insight into how the group governs the territories it has conquered - and throwing up some surprises WE KNOW only too well the power that Islamic State wields on social media. After every atrocity, slickly ...

mg22630152.000-1_300[1].jpg MICHAEL MARTIN slides his phone over to me. On the screen are four brightly coloured buttons labelled with calamities like "fire" and "car crash". I put my finger over one, then hesitate. "Don't worry," he says. "It won't actually call 911." Not yet, anyway. Martin is sh...

dn27281-1_300[1].jpg BORED, standing in a long line at the donut shop, I invited the world to come stand in line with me. I whipped out my phone, opened up the Periscope app and panned slowly over the glass window of delicacies. Within a few seconds, there were a dozen strangers peering through the...

mg22630151.700-1_300[1].jpg People have talked about robots taking our jobs for ages. Problem is, they already have – we just didn't notice FORGET Skynet. Hypothetical world-ending artificial intelligence makes headlines, but the hype ignores what's happening right under our noses. Cheap, fast AI i...

From spyware designed to catch students misbehaving to police tracking rioters by phone, we are spied on as never before, reveals a book by Bruce Schneier mg22530142.500-1_1200[1].jpg "DEAR subscriber, you have been registered as a participant in a mass disturbance." This text was sent by the Ukrai...