The Trump administration has kept airlines and nations on edge as it weighed a decision to expand an in-flight ban on electronics larger than a smartphone. On Wednesday, the administration announced that it will not expand the ban, and it will lift be lifted in countries that were already affected. But the terms of the decision are a bit suspicious.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released the latest issue in its ongoing Vault 7 series — a trove of secret or otherwise classified US Central Intelligence Agency files from 2013 to 2016 describing previously undisclosed malware and viruses.

If you're erasing sensitive files from a computer, you probably want them gone forever and far beyond the reach of data recovery tools. Unfortunately, that's not what happens all of the time. Here are some simple steps you can take to make sure your files are deleted permanently.

The '90s cyberpunk thriller Hackers is used too often to illustrate the fearful future of cyber security, but it's popular for a reason. The film's seemingly fictional scenarios keep coming true. Take this week's global ransomware attack, for instance. It's a plot twist that would make Matthew Lillard leer at the camera and cackle.

It's a crucial component in any laptop or desktop computer, but very few computer owners actually know what a motherboard is or what it does. There's a motherboard (often called a logic board in smaller more mobile devices) sitting in every computer system: the processor, RAM, hard drives, graphics card, and other bits and pieces all plug straight into it.

With the release of the 10.5-inch iPad and the upcoming laptop-friendly features of iOS 11, soon you'll be able to officially replace your laptop with a sheet of futuristic Apple glass. It's been a long time coming, but I thought I'd take it one step further, and see if you can replace your whole phone and laptop set up with an iPad instead.

You've got more choices than ever when it comes to backing up your data — you are backing up your data, right? — so how do you choose the best one for your needs? First, it's a good idea to pick up some kind of external hard drive. You can go the Network Attached Storage (NAS) route if you want to access the storage from your Wi-Fi (or build your own Netflix). You can also just get a regular external hard drive from someone like Seagate or Western Digital.

Microsoft has confirmed that a significant chunk of its source code for Windows 10 was posted to a repository called BetaArchive. The exact size of the leak has been disputed, but the data reportedly comes from the Shared Source Kit that Microsoft distributes to trusted partners.

Microsoft's tall claim that "no known ransomware" will run on its Windows 10 S operating system has been weighed, measured and found wanting.

The tech sector is still going strong, and programmers are enjoying a golden age of increased demand and pay for their skills. Thanks to coding's newfound popularity, there's a way to break into the industry without spending years in school. With the Coding Powerhouse eBook Bundle, you can familiarize yourself with today's top programming languages for a fraction of the cost.

US Girl Scouts can start earning cybersecurity badges next year, thanks to an effort by the Girl Scouts of America and cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The youth organisation came up with the idea simply by asking Scouts what they want. And the girls want to hack.

The estate of M.C. Escher may have just lost its lucrative stranglehold on the dorm room poster market thanks to artist Chris Rodley, who used a deep learning algorithm to merge a book of dinosaurs with a book of flower paintings. The results are magnificent, and deserve a spot on the walls of our finest art galleries.

The Australian government wants the ability to read messages kept secret by encryption in the name of aiding criminal investigations. But just how it proposes to do this is unclear.

As if there aren't enough tech security threats to worry about, you also need to be on your guard against so-called 'stalkerware' — those invasive types of programs installed by suspicious spouses, jealous exes or controlling parents without your knowledge. Here are the warning signs (on your computer) to look out for, and what you can do about them.

National Computational Infrastructure Australia's Raijin supercomputer has been ranked as Australia's fastest in the Top 500 list just released at the International Supercomputing Conference 2017. The list is published twice a year at the world's major supercomputing conferences and rank the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

NCI's Raijin supercomputer comes in at world number 70 with a measured performance of 1.67 Petaflops.

When it comes to design software, the Adobe Creative Cloud suite is king, and anyone looking to make a living as a graphic designer or video editor needs to know it inside out. Programs like Photoshop and Illustrator have a rep for being complicated, but thanks to this Adobe CC Essentials Training Bundle, you can master the suite in no time.

True hubris is a person trying to use a Microsoft Surface Pro like a laptop. It takes Mr. Darcy levels of pride to believe you can trust so fully in a kickstand and flimsy keyboard. The Surface Pro is many things, including everything from Microsoft's attempt to woo creative professionals to a beautifully engineered device that wants to be a fusion of tablet and laptop. Yet it has never been the true take-anywhere device Microsoft has tried to sell it as. That kickstand and keyboard define it for many consumers. And now, on the Surface's fifth iteration, the kickstand seems to have finally accomplished what it set out to do: Bring the Surface as close to a laptop as it can ever hope to be — even though that isn't as close as Microsoft might like.

If you aren't a programmer, you're probably not going to know this, but there's a vicious rivalry lurking in the code of every app you use. If code isn't written consistently — using either the tab or the space button to create indentations — the format can get all wonky, making it difficult for multiple authors to contribute to the code. While the methods produce virtually the same result, lines have still been drawn.

With a stunt that will probably see France initiating changes to its National ID card program, an artist named Raphaël Fabre submitted a photorealistic computer-generated image of himself — and he says it was approved without question.