QuinCunx

The Anatomy of the Occupy Wall Street Movement on Twitter | MIT Technology Review :  "A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network researchers"

Obama Outlines Ambitious Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gases - NYTimes.com :  "“As a president, as a father and as an American, I am here to say, we need to act,” he said to students and others gathered in a sunbaked quadrangle at Georgetown University. “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that is beyond saving.”"

Beyond silicon: Transistors without semiconductors :  "Yap's team had made a transistor without a semiconductor. When sufficient voltage was applied, it switched to a conducting state. When the voltage was low or turned off, it reverted to its natural state as an insulator. Furthermore, there was no "leakage": no electrons from the gold dots escaped into the insulating BNNTs, thus keeping the tunneling channel cool. In contrast, silicon is subject to leakage, which wastes energy in electronic devices and generates a lot of heat."

The Verizon Center in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Bruce Kushnick : Verizon's Wireless 'Voice Link' as a Replacement of the Wires? The Downgrading and Disconnecting of America's Communications Networks  Posted June 18, 2013 |  3:21 PM  "Imagine waking up after a storm and your wired phone line is dead. You've kept it because the cell phone service isn't reliable or sounds like you are under water. Maybe you really wanted something more reliable in case of an emergency. You check and the burglar alarm isn't working..." Related articles Bruce Kushnick: Verizon's Wireless 'Voice Link' as a Replacement of the Wires? The Downgrading and Disconnecting of America's Communications Networks Verizon Plans to Abandon Copper Wires In Islands Damaged by Sandy Verizon Wireless Enhances 4G LTE Coverage around Concord, New Hampshire Is Our Emergency LTE Network Plan Getting Hijack...

The universe within 1 billion light years of Earth, showing local superclusters. Approximately 63 million galaxies are shown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) 3-D Map Of Universe Shows Positions Of Known Galaxies In Unprecedented Detail (VIDEO) : "As seen in the video, the map shows the location of all the visible galaxies in our universe as far away as 340 million light-years ." Related articles A New 3D Map of the Universe Covers More Than 100 Million Light-Years "Cosmic Flows" --Mapping the Movements of the Galaxies A video map of motions in the nearby universe New 3-D Map Of Universe New Video Map Shows Large-Scale Cosmic Structure out to 300 million Light Years Cosmography of the Local Universe - a 3D video map of the known Universe Giant Black Hole Reveals Cool, Dusty Surprise in Active Galaxy We Can Make It to the Edge of the Observable Universe in a Few Decades Cosmic Cartography: Here Is Your (Local) Universe Porpoise Galaxy from Hubble

Special Topics in Mindboggling Physics - The Morning News :  "The first few days are always exciting. Thrilling, even, as he or she takes me by the hand and leads me through special relativity, general relativity and black holes, ideas that I understand just barely enough to wish I understood more. But then the writer asks me to do something I’m not capable of. The proposal is never threatening, but it always amounts to this: Imagine another dimension. OK? Just imagine another dimension! C’mon, what are you waiting for? Imagine it!"

Clothing of the Future! - YouTube : " "

N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Record Logs Halted Terror Threats - NYTimes.com :  "“We aren’t trying to hide it,” he said. “We’re trying to protect America. So we need your help in doing that. This isn’t something that’s just N.S.A. or the administration doing it on its own. This is what our nation expects our government to do for us.” But in his spirited exchanges with committee members, notably Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, General Alexander said he was seeking to declassify many details about the program now that they have been leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor who came forward to say he was the source of documents about the phone log program and other classified matters."

Verizon-Cable Deal’s Terms Questioned as FCC Approves - Businessweek :  "Verizon is buying unused airwaves from competitors including largest cable provider Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and No. 2 Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC), and has agreed to cooperate with the cable companies in marketing services and devising new products. Antitrust officials at the Justice Department approved the deal Aug. 16 with limits on cooperation, and the FCC’s action is the final regulatory clearance needed for the transaction."

Analysis: Few options for companies to defy U.S. intelligence demands | Reuters :  "The program relies on section 702 of the 2008 amended version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lets the government collect electronic communications for the purpose of acquiring intelligence on non-U.S. targets that pose a threat to national security"

Cray X-MP/24 (serial no. 115) used by NSA (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) NSA phone records collection: anger swells after data revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk :  ""The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call." But such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records , the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's licence , credit history , social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off." Related articles NSA phone records collection: anger swells after data revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveill...

The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) AM 1600 WWRL - NSA Spying Operation In Place For Years, All Major Phone Companies :  ""NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it's been all these companies, not just one" William Binney told news program Democracy Now on Thursday. "They're just continuing the collection of this data on all U.S. citizens." " Related articles AM 1600 WWRL - NSA Spying Operation In Place For Years, All Major Phone Companies NSA Whistleblower: The Government Is Still Telling You an 'Outright Lie' About Its Spying Programs NSA Says It Doesn't Spy On Americans As Obama Administration Defends Letting NSA Spy On Americans White House denies it spies on Americans NSA not just monitoring Verizon, over 3 billion US calls monitored daily o...

Logo of the United States Federal Communications Commission, used on their website and some publications since the early 2000s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Bruce Kushnick: AT&T, ALEC, FCC, Part 2: The AT&T FCC Petition is ALEC Model Legislation. :  "The irony of all of this: AT&T's entire U-Verse broadband and cable service is based almost entirely on the PSTN and uses the old copper wire that was already in place. And U-Verse already offers VOIP -based service over these old wires as AT&T's digital voice service." Related articles Bruce Kushnick: AT&T, ALEC, FCC, Part 2: The AT&T FCC Petition is ALEC Model Legislation. BlackBerry Q5 stops by the FCC with AT&T-friendly 3G Sprint HTC Windows Phone Spied at FCC FCC Filing Reveals HTC Windows Phone 8 Device with LTE Sprint's next Windows Phone, the HTC Tiara, inches closer to release with FCC cert Human Evolution Affected By Culture: Big Feet Preference In Rural Indon...

Image via CrunchBase Comcast executive Google Fiber criticism: Americans don’t need speeds | BGR :  Cohen’s assertions that America is a utopia of competitive high-speed broadband services are at odds with the perceptions of American consumers ...ero. Related articles Comcast says Americans don't need superfast gigabit internet service Comcast exec insists Americans don't really need Google Fiber-like speeds Comcast exec thinks there's little demand for Google Fiber level speed Comcast VP: Gigabit Internet speeds not needed by US consumers Google expects Fiber to be profitable, hints at new markets Booting Up: Comcast Thinks We Can't Handle Google Fiber's Zippy Internet Speeds Google Fiber not just to prove a point, will be profitable to Google