NSA Privacy Violation Scandal- How it All Started

NSA Headquarters

The world shook when the world came to know about NSA spying on the very personal messages contacts and information of a vast majority of online users. This violation of privacy by NSA was put forward in front of the public by Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. Edward via his interviews with the Guardian told about NSa destroying the privacy of people.

Now this article by Arstechnica further tells about the details of NSA setup, codenamed XKeyscore about how the whole setup was made by NSA to spy on the internet traffic, emails, chat messages, search engine queries.

You can view the whole article at
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/building-a-panopticon-the-evolution-of-the-nsas-xkeyscore/

The Elder Scrolls Anthology Coming on September 10

Exciting news for the RPG fans. Bethesda Softworks will release the complete anthology of  the epic The Elder Scrolls series on September 10th. This premium box set (shown above) will include all five main games from the series – Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.

The anthology will cost $79 .99 package (€59.99 / £49.99 / $89.99AUD) and will include all DLCs and expansions from Morrowind to skyrim. the Anthology also features a set of five physical maps detailing the lands of Tamriel, Iliac Bay, Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim.

 More info at Bethblog

Fb Like box becomes faster and lighter

If you use the facebook like box in your website, the plugin should now load a little faster than it actually does. That is to say the pages will load a little faster than earlier.

The facebook engineering team states that the new like box is 2-4 times lighter than the original one. The facebook like button loads up in 0.5 seconds, as opposed to 2.3 seconds that it used earlier. Also the size of the new like box has decreased from 245 to 45 kB.

Earlier, Facebook Like box made 24 web requests and would load in 2.4 seconds

Facebook improved the performance of the plugin by switching to inline CSS styles (as opposed to using external stylesheets) and by squeezing multiple scripts into one – the plugin thus has to make fewer web requests.

Facebook Like box now  makes just 13 requests (for photos).

More info on Facebook developers

Intel Facebook Collaborate On Future Data Center Rack Technologies

Intel Corporation announced a collaboration with Facebook* to define the next generation of rack technologies used to power the world's largest data centers. As part of the collaboration, the companies also unveiled a mechanical prototype built by Quanta Computer* that includes Intel's new, innovative photonic rack architecture to show the total cost, design and reliability improvement potential of a disaggregated rack environment.

 

"Intel and Facebook are collaborating on a new disaggregated, rack-scale server architecture that enables independent upgrading of compute, network and storage subsystems that will define the future of mega-datacenter designs for the next decade," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer during his keynote address at Open Computer Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. "The disaggregated rack architecture includes Intel's new photonic architecture, based on high-bandwidth, 100Gbps Intel® Silicon Photonics Technology, that enables fewer cables, increased bandwidth, farther reach and extreme power efficiency compared to today's copper based interconnects."

Rattner explained that the new architecture is based on more than a decade's worth of research to invent a family of silicon-based photonic devices, including lasers, modulators and detectors using low-cost silicon to fully integrate photonic devices of unprecedented speed and energy efficiency. Silicon photonics is a new approach to using light (photons) to move huge amounts of data at very high speeds with extremely low power over a thin optical fiber rather than using electrical signals over a copper cable. Intel has spent the past two years proving its silicon photonics technology was production-worthy, and has now produced engineering samples.

Silicon photonics made with inexpensive silicon rather than expensive and exotic optical materials provides a distinct cost advantage over older optical technologies in addition to providing greater speed, reliability and scalability benefits. Businesses with server farms or massive data centers could eliminate performance bottlenecks and ensure long-term upgradability while saving significant operational costs in space and energy.

Large collection of Free Learning Material

Got some free time and want to spend it to learn something new, here is a list of some of the resources you can use for learning new topics in science and technology or some new programming languages. Some of these include E-books from  NASA and Microsoft and lectures and notes from other sources

Another Earth Like Planet Found 12 Light Years Away

A team of astronomers have announced that Tau Ceti - a star 12 light years away from Earth-  has five planets revolving around it and one of them may be in the habitable zone of the star. 

Some of The Free Blogging Platforms

A blog is personalized webpage or web gallery where you can share your thoughts , experience and memories and  get paid for that too.  In modern times, blogging has come as powerful way for people to express themselves. 

Any individual, institution or a company can create a blog to share photos, memories and expressing their thoughts without spending anything( in most cases). A popular blog can have audience any part of the globe.