For years, it was the largest portal for sex on the internet. Now its fate could shape the future of Silicon Valley.

Exposure to the internet did not make us into a nation of yeoman mind-farmers (unless you count Minecraft). That people in the billions would self-assemble, and that these assemblies could operate in their own best interests, was … optimistic.

On July 11, 2002, the researchers revealed that they had synthesized the polio virus, which had been wiped out in the US in 1979. It was the first time a virus had been created from scratch with synthetic DNA. The work was funded by the Pentagon in part to establish whether terrorists could pull off such a feat. The answer was yes.

In a small Minnesota town, an IT technician found his way to the darkest corner of the web. Then he made a deadly plan.

Scandals. Backstabbing. Resignations. Record profits. Time Bombs.

Thousands of bodies are buried in shallow graves around Raqqa, Syria. One group is using Facebook and Google Earth to identify human remains and rebury them where they belong.

An investigator set out to discover the source of one scammy robocall. Turns out, his target made them by the millions.

After sepsis forced the amputation of Sheila Advento’s hands, an intricate transplant technique made her whole again. Then came the side effects.

How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.

When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, then was diagnosed with it herself, she and her husband set out to find a cure.

On space rocks and the people who chase them.

Karl Friston’s free energy principle might be the most all-encompassing idea since Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

On the world’s (then) largest online community.

A daughter investigates her father’s belief that the government is subjecting him and thousands more to to mind control.

The story of a serial swatter.

More Americans rely on Puerto Rico’s grid than on any other public electric utility. How one renegade plant worker led them through the shadows.

“It was a clusterfuck of clusterfucks.”

The Bashar al-Assad regime’s indiscriminate air strikes have terrorized civilians for years. Now a small band of activist-entrepreneurs is building a sensor network that listens for warplanes and warns people when and where the bombs will fall.

In 2010, an art dealer claimed he hid a chest of gold and jewels in the Rockies. At least four people have died looking for it.

Buried in media scholar Jonathan Albright’s research was proof of a massive political misinformation campaign. Now he’s taking on the the world’s biggest platforms before it’s too late.

How 4 Mexican immigrant kids and their cheap robot beat MIT.

Alex Vardakostas has been on a decade-long quest to build a robot that can prepare the perfect cheeseburger. It could also put his family out of work.

Arthur and Kathleen Breitman thought they held the secret to building a new decentralized utopia. On the way, they plunged into a new kind of hell.

How the Oculus founder, along with ex-Palantir executives, plan to reinvent national security, starting with Trump’s agenda.

Burt Dorman says that the scientific mainstream missed the chance to wipe out AIDS and save the lives of 35 million people. Now he wants another try.