School’s out, which means millions of American kids are off at camp, pitching tents, roasting marshmallows — or, hacking. The online security firm ESET runs a camp for young hackers that encourages them to use their skills for good, not evil. And Amazon rolls out a new platform for fan fiction.

Tech companies are reacting in myriad ways to government surveillance of online data. Some are calling for more transparency from the government, and some are building new things to give people a better sense of security online. Mozilla’s Internet browser Firefox is in that last category. Firefox recently moved forward with a plan to automatically block third party cookies — and advertisers aren’t happy.

There’s a new gaming console in town, the Ouya. Its crowdfunded Kickstarter campaign had 60,000 backers — and the console only costs $100. While the Ouya won’t put Microsoft or Sony out of business, it will likely find an audience. And why did Edward Snowden ask his lawyers to store their phones in freezers?

One of the people who works on big ideas at the chip-maker Intel is Genevieve Bell. She’s not a software engineer, or a developer, she’s an anthropologist. Bell studies everything from how people feel about their gadgets to how they use them differently around the world. And we look at a new dress made not out of gauze, but out of gaze.

So many of our real world activities now live online, but here’s one that still coming into focus: civil disobedience. Is there such a thing as a digital sit-in? And analysts say the biggest U.S. cellphone carriers, AT&T and Verizon, now get just two percent of their annual revenue from signing up new customers. In the year 2000, that number was 20 percent.

Industrial 3D printer maker Stratasys just bought a hot name in the 3D printing consumer market: MakerBot. The pricetag? $403 million in Statasys stock. MakerBot’s desktop 3D printers cost about $2,000, while the machines Stratasys makes can cost over half a million. We talk to Stratasys CEO David Reis and MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis to hear what’s behind the merger.

One psychiatrist in England is building digital avatars — almost like characters in a video game — to help schizophrenic patients put a face to the voices in their heads. And Microsoft backs off new Xbox restrictions after outcry from gamers.  

Most of us think about hackers as people who tinker with computers and make tech do things it wasn’t originally supposed to do. Some people trace hacking back to the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when the technologically curious started tricking telephone signal systems into unlocking free long-distance calling. But as far back as the early 1900s, farmers, ranchers — or you could call them hackers — started hooking up their own phone lines.

Netflix is teaming up with DreamWorks Animation to create original content. But their partnership isn’t for grown-ups, it’s for kids. We take a look at how to improve the presentation of weather forecasts. And Ford has a new robot that drives.