online games

UK netizens may find their online activities under ever-greater scrutiny in the near future. The UK government has pushed ahead with a proposal to require monitoring of Internet usage, including social networks such as Facebook and conversations within online games.

The new UK law would require communication firms to hold records of who contacted whom, rather than the actual contents of online conversation. About £2 billion ($3.34 billion) would go toward compensating the firms for the technical challenge of collecting the data.

Plastic toy soldiers might look pretty passe to kids who now dream of piloting Predator and Global Hawk drones for hours and hours on end – all while sitting hundreds of miles away. But a free online game can satisfy that itch to control something real, as opposed to mere pixels on a screen, with just a keyboard and joystick.

Tired of car chases, robberies, and general action-packed anarchy? Set aside Grand Theft Auto IV for a minute and enter a new kind of gaming adventure: the exciting world of protein folding! Researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington have developed Foldit, a free, online game in which players compete to design proteins.