Shedding light on the dark webThe drug trade is moving from the street to online cryptomarkets. Forced to compete on price and quality, sellers are upping their game LEAVING vacuum-sealed bags, digital scales and stashes of marijuana lying around was a mistake. So was getting T-shirts and hoodies emblazoned with “Cali Connect”, under which name drugs were dealt online. Selling pot to an undercover

AS THIS newspaper went to press, Facebook was about to become a public company. It will be one of the biggest stockmarket flotations ever: the social-networking giant expects investors to value it at $100 billion or so. The news raises several questions, from “Is it worth that much?” to “What will it do next?” But the most intriguing question is what Facebook's flotation tells us about the state o

A third industrial revolutionAs manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition, says Paul Markillie. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries OUTSIDE THE SPRAWLING Frankfurt Messe, home of innumerable German trade fairs, stands the “Hammering Man”, a 21-metre kinetic statue that steadily raises and lowers its arm to bash a piece of metal with a ham

CONVENTIONAL law firms charge vast hourly fees and then hand the work to underlings while the partners play golf at clubs their clients are too poor to join. At least, that is how it seems to many clients, whose irritation at being overcharged turned to fury during the recession. Some clients are switching to unconventional law firms, which claim to offer equally good lawyering for much less money

A tangled webAmerica’s new internet rules are mostly sensible—but the country’s real web problem is far more basic FOR a subject that arouses such strong passions, “network neutrality” is fiendishly difficult to pin down. Ask five geeks and you may well be given six definitions of it. The basic concept sounds simple enough: that the internet's pipes should show no favours and blindly deliver packe

Into the unknownJapan is ageing faster than any country in history, with vast consequences for its economy and society. So why, asks Henry Tricks, is it doing so little to adapt? FOR a glimpse of Japan's future, a good place to visit is Yubari, a former mining town on the northern island of Hokkaido, which four years ago went spectacularly bust with debts of ¥36 billion ($315m). It is a quiet spot

The meaning of StuxnetA sophisticated “cyber-missile” highlights the potential—and limitations—of cyberwar IT HAS been described as “amazing”, “groundbreaking” and “impressive” by computer-security specialists. The Stuxnet worm, a piece of software that infects industrial-control systems, is remarkable in many ways. Its unusual complexity suggests that it is the work of a team of well-funded exper

SWEEPING his hand in all directions, from the Mormon Temple to Utah's State Capitol and the Great Salt Lake, Tony Yapias, the director of the Proyecto Latino de Utah and a leading Hispanic activist in the state, cannot suppress a smirk. “This was Mexico,” he says. In 1847, when the Mormon pioneers arrived, “no one asked Brigham Young for his papers.”

A virtual counter-revolutionThe internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it

WHEN George W. Bush referred to “rumours on the, uh, internets” during the 2004 presidential campaign, he was derided for his cluelessness—and “internets” became a shorthand for a lack of understanding of the online world. But what looked like ignorance then looks like prescience now. As divergent forces tug at the internet, it is in danger of losing its universality and splintering into separate

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OpinionLeadersLetters to the editorBy InvitationCurrent topicsIsrael and HamasWar in UkraineUS elections 2024The World Ahead 2024Climate changeCoronavirusThe world economyThe Economist explainsArtificial intelligenceCurrent topicsIsrael and HamasWar in UkraineUS elections 2024The World Ahead 2024Climate changeCoronavirusThe world economyThe Economist explainsArtificial intelligenceWorldThe world t