Decentralized networking could bring the internet to those who need it most—rural communities and disaster victims. In the most recent season of Silicon Valley, the protagonist Richard Hendriks abandons the video chat business he started with his friends to pursue his own dream of creating a new internet. Although Hendriks's peers initially look at him askance for doggedly pursuing such a crazy idea, the dream of decentralizing the internet is alive and well IRL.

Deep-learning systems tend to be one-trick wonders: they’re great at the task they’ve been trained to do, but pretty awful at everything else. Now a new neural network from Google suggests that AI can be taught to multitask after all. Most deep-learning systems are built to solve specific problems, such as recognising animals in photos from the Serengeti or translating between languages.

The UK Parliament has been hit by a cyber-security attack. MPs were reportedly told about the hack on Friday night and later told of difficulties in accessing their emails away from the Westminster estate. A Commons spokeswoman said the lack of email access was not a result of the cyber-attack itself but part of the steps being taken to manage the issue. She said Parliamentary authorities were liaising with the National Cyber Security Centre.

A US defence contractor and former state department security officer was arrested by American counterintelligence officials and charged with spying for China. The justice department said on Thursday that Kevin Mallory of Leesburg, Virginia, allegedly sold classified documents to Chinese intelligence agents on trips to Shanghai in March and April.

Earlier this week, GDAX, the digital currency exchange run by Coinbase, experienced a flash crash in its USD - Ethereum market. Within seconds the price of..

At E3 2017, Microsoft shared more details about its upcoming console, the Xbox One X. Although the firm announced all of the specifications and the price, there were still unanswered questions when it came to the resolution of some of its games. While we probably won't get a clear answer until the titles become available to the public in the winter, one member of Respawn Entertainment has chimed in on the experience with the Xbox One X.

Several US senators spoke out this week on the importance of net neutrality to innovation and free speech. They are right. The Internet has become our public square, our newspaper, our megaphone. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to turn it in something more akin to commercial cable TV, and we all have to work together to stop it.

Google wants to make it easier for governments to access customer data stored on overseas servers. The company believes current rules on information sharing are outdated, and is set to press US lawmakers to update them. If it gets its way, governments would be able to quickly get their hands on the personal data of Google account holders around the world.

Datsun 240Z values seem to be surging in the past two years, bucking the recent 'cooling' in the classic car market. Why is this? What do you think?

Federal and state officials have increased their focus on the problem.

Artificial intelligence could set off a third world war, but humans will win the battle, according to Alibaba founder Jack Ma. "The first technology revolution caused World War I," Ma told CNBC in an interview that aired on Tuesday. "The second technology revolution caused World War II. This is the third technology revolution." Workers and employers are increasingly defined by data unless governments show more willingness to make "hard choices."

A massive trove of Microsoft's internal Windows operating system builds and chunks of its core source code have leaked online. The data – some 32TB of official and non-public installation images and software blueprints that compress down to 8TB – were uploaded to betaarchive.com, the latest load of files provided just earlier this week. It is believed the confidential data in this dump was exfiltrated from Microsoft's in-house systems around March this year.

SpaceX has successfully launched and landed a recycled Falcon 9 rocket for the second time. The rocket’s first stage — the 14-story-tall core that houses the fuel and the rocket’s main engines — touched down on one of the company’s autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from a launchpad at nearby Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s the 12th time SpaceX has successfully landed one of these rocket stages out of 17 attempts, and the seventh time it’s performed the feat at sea.

Last June, Big Cable made an appealing offer for viewers and regulators. Companies would provide consumers with free apps to watch TV rather than making them pay monthly fees for cable boxes. But the cable companies didn’t do this out of the kindness of their hearts — they wanted to stop the Federal Communication Commission from passing regulations making them ship apps.

Google is stopping one of the most controversial advertising formats: ads inside Gmail that scan users’ email contents. The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers.

'Pirate' sites Sci-Hub and LibGen have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers. A New York District Court granted Elsevier's request for a default judgment of $15 million in damages. Sci-Hub's founder says that she can't pay the damages even if she wanted to, and for now, the "Pirate Bay for science" isn't going anywhere.

There’s a new automated propaganda machine driving global politics. How it works and what it will mean for the future of democracy.

Everything anyone has ever said about staying safe while interacting with the police is wrong. That citizens are told to comport themselves in complete obeisance just to avoid being beaten or shot by officers is itself bizarre -- an insane inversion...

Sooner or later, China will recognise the value of digital assets. This adds to the urgency of citizens ensuring they control the data trails that tell the world what they think and do.

We examine the government's attempts to silence the country's bloggers.