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This was submitted via the forum, edited by mattie_p. sl4shd0rk writes:

"Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has decided to take a stab at stopping the illegal activity of the NSA by filing a class action lawsuit aimed at President Barack Obama and members of the intelligence community. The suit is at least the third filed at the Federal level since the Snowden revelations were made public. The previous two suits are almost guaranteed to end up in the Supreme Court, as federal judges disagree on the constitutional legalities of the NSA program."

Paul's suit is the first class action lawsuit against the NSA. If you want to join the suit yourself, be prepared to leave some contact information with his Political Action Committee, and then get hit up for a donation. Interestingly enough, there was some controversy about the text of the lawsuit, but not in a legal sense. Paul, a known plagiarist in speeches, was falsely accused of plagiarizing this lawsuit by the Washington Post.

LaminatorX writes: "Reuters reports that Time Warner Cable has accepted a $45.2bn buyout offer from Comcast. This comes after fending off a previous offer from rival Charter Communications. Should the deal pass regulatory scrutiny, the combined giant would be a player in 19 of the top 20 U.S. media markets."

amblivious writes: "For the first time, laser-driven fusion has passed a milestone called fuel gain, the point at which more energy is produced than is consumed in starting the reaction. In a trial at the National Ignition Facility late last year, 15 kilojoules of energy was released with an input of 10 kilojoules (Nature). Although this is not yet a self-sustaining reaction because the reactor as a whole consumes more energy it is expected that collisions with helium nuclei generated in the reaction will lead to ignition. See the article at New Scientist for more information."

amblivous writes: "It seems that reports of Jade Rabbit's death may have been premature as it is showing some signs of life again. New Scientist reports that the Chinese space agency has received signals from Yutu (Jade Rabbit) and amateurs have also received a downlink signal, according to the Planetary Society. It is not yet clear if Yutu will be able to continue its mission."

Calling it the most sophisticated malware-driven espionage campaign ever discovered, researchers said they have uncovered an attack dating back to at least 2007 that infected computers running the Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems of 380 victims in 31 countries."

Behind the scenes, inside the massive data centers that power this worldwide social network, you’ll find all sorts of other technologies that have changed our world in very different ways — and perhaps bigger ways.

Any good techie can appreciate the items listed or at least several of them. They are often over-looked ways that Facebook has contributed; ways that average Facebook users probably have absolutely no clue about; ways that might earn them just a bit of respect from the most die-hard Facebook haters."

AndyTheAbsurd writes with an article from Gigaom:

A Twitter advertising technique is perturbing people. Promoted brands like MasterCard and IFC are appearing in the list of accounts some users follow, even if they don’t actually follow them.

Sources familiar with the company’s advertising strategy tell me this has been occurring since early 2013, but the public has only just now cottoned onto it thanks to actor William Shatner (of Star Trek fame). Shatner brought attention to it after he saw that “MasterCard” appeared in his following list despite the fact that he didn’t follow it.