Inside the world of high-priced online reputation management.

“As a matter of historical analysis, the relationship between secrecy and privacy can be stated in an axiom: the defense of privacy follows, and never precedes, the emergence of new technologies for the exposure of secrets. In other words, the case for privacy always comes too late.”

What happens when a 26-year-old Kentucky resident decides to investigate a rape case from his computer.

The emerging political consciousness of Silicon Valley.

On cushy jobs in web development, deeply un-cushy opportunities in writing, and our assumptions about the value of labor.

Tracing a secretive cyber-war’s battles and casualties.

On artists using their bodies to blur the line between human and machine.

How Wall Street won.

The outing of a failed writer who spent years anonymously grinding axes on Wikipedia.

How the case of a poisoned college student in China, cold for 18 years, has suddenly turned into “what may be the largest amateur online manhunt in history.”

The con man who cost Google $500 million.

In the not-so-distant future, all of our objects will talk to each other. They’ll make our coffee, find our keys, save our lives. The roadmap to a fully networked existence.

The possibilities and pitfalls of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

Marketing research,the pre-Facebook history of ‘likeability,’ and why there will never be a ‘dislike’ button.

Life in Green Bank, West Virginia, a town without cell signals and a haven people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity (a disease that may or may not exist).

Two decades later, unpacking a historic bust.

Groupon disasters, the behaviors of the consumer swarm, and how the “1% and the 90% [are] collaborating to prey on the 9% in the middle.”

On Swedish game designer Markus Persson and his singular creation, Minecraft, which has sold over twenty million copies and earned Persson over a hundred million dollars last year.

A cultural history of Bitcoin and what happened when the nascent virtual currency began to be covered by the mainstream media.

On Ilya Zhitomirskiy, an idealistic young developer who committed suicide 18 months after founding Diaspora, his well-publicized, open-source alternative to Facebook.

The daily deals company turned down a $6 billion offer from Google and went public. Now its stock is down 80% and its founder/CEO has been fired. On Groupon’s failed strategy and tenuous future.

Who is ‘Tawnya Grilth’?

How governments and private companies have engaged in digital arms trading by building a global black market for ‘zero day’ hacks.

On the late singer Judee Sill, the virtual cemetery site Find a Grave, and memorials in the age of the Twitter RIP.

“I am not a tech journalist. I have never done this before. I don’t know what’s going on. Like most journalists everywhere, I am hungover.”