Mobile calls and texts made on any GSM network can be eavesdropped upon using four cheap phones and open source software, say security researchers.

He said many of the pieces in the eavesdropping toolkit already existed thanks to work by other security researchers but there was one part the pair had to create themselves.

Mr Nohl said the motivation for carrying out the research was to create awareness around the problem and perhaps prompt operators to improve security.

The client simply loads a QR code scanner such as QuickMark and scans the code on the machine. Their PayPal account is debited, a Tweet is sent to their phone via Twitter, and the machine delivers a gumball, all in seconds and without any physical interaction with the machine.

Imagine that you read the first chapter of a book at a friend's house and would like to buy it to read the rest. Pull out your phone and with two quick taps a copy is being shipped to you through Amazon.

A small Netherlands based cable operator (CAI Harderwijk) has used DOCSIS3 (DOCSIS 3.0) technology, which is similar to the EuroDOCSIS3 standard employed by Virgin Media in the UK, to demonstrate a symmetric 100Mbps broadband (same speed both ways) service.

It is known that DOCSIS3 is theoretically able to reach a peak download speed of over 300Mbps (400Mbps+ with EuroDOCSIS3) and a little over 108Mbps for upload performance.

Although elements of the engine have been built over the last 173 years, a complete working model of the steam-powered machine has never been made.

"A hundred years ago, before computers were available, [Babbage] had envisaged this machine."

"What you realise when you read Babbage's papers is that this was the first real computer," said Mr Graham-Cumming. "It had expandable memory, a CPU, microcode, a printer, a plotter and was programmable with punch cards.

Due to the highly targeted nature of the Stuxnet worm and a large concentration of infections in Iran, analysts speculated that it may have been launched by a major government in an effort to sabotage Iran's controversial Bushehr power plant.

The Stuxnet worm is designed to infect the programmable logic controllers in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems that are manufactured by Siemens.

Iran's government has been purging the Stuxnet malware from computers at Bushehr but says that the major systems of the plant haven't been damaged.

A DARPA-funded project has reinvented a type of logic gate in the style of Victorian inventor Charles Babbage - not for aesthetic reasons, but because the retro device works at temperatures too high for conventional transistors.

Babbage famously designed mechanical computers through which data would circulate as steam-driven pistons turned cogs and levers.

Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime.

The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials.

The device tricks the phones into disabling encryption and records call details and content before they're routed on their proper way through voice-over-IP.

Paget's system costs only about $1,500, as opposed to several hundreds of thousands for professional products. Most of the price is for the laptop he used to operate the system.

Encrypted calls are not protected from interception because the rogue tower can simply turn it off.

But Paget said he could also capture phones using 3G by sending out jamming noise to block 3G. Phones would then switch to 2G and hook up with his rogue tower. Paget had his jammer and an amplifier on stage but declined to turn them on saying they would "probably knock out all Las Vegas cell phone systems."

Cars powered by electricity are going to be cheaper to run per mile than gasoline cars, which provides some comfort to electric vehicle buyers.

The key question for the auto industry is what happens in a few years after the early adopters, the people willing to pay more for new technology and a greener ride, already have their EVs. Here, the economics of fueling and daily driving patterns loom much larger in the decision.

The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said.

SanDisk determined the media's 100-year data-retention lifespan based on internal tests conducted at normal room temperatures.